Associate Professor Vijay Solanki, the hospital’s director of cardiac services, said private billing had allowed the hospital to develop an around-the-clock heart attack service for public and private patients. The angiogram service might also be unviable without the volume of elective angiograms funded by private health cover, he said.
Many staff members were considering leaving and one nurse from the cath lab team had resigned “citing a lack of certainty about the future of the hospital”, Solanki told the inquiry.
Healthscope chief executive Tino La Spina during budget estimates earlier this year. Credit: Edwina Pickles
Data from industry group Private Health Australia shows 79 per cent of the northern beaches population, more than 211,000 people, have private health insurance, significantly higher than the 55 per cent of people nationwide.
Healthscope chief executive Tino La Spina defended the hospital’s positive performance on key metrics, and staff who had continued to serve the community “under intense public scrutiny”.
“Our people have been spat on, shouted at, had their tyres slashed, [and been] unfairly vilified,” he told the inquiry. “The hospital is held to a higher standard than any other hospital in NSW.”
AMA NSW president Dr Kathryn Austin said any suggestion the hospital would become a fully public operation was “a slap in the face” to a community promised 20 years of high-level private healthcare.
“It is also a betrayal to more than 200 senior Northern Beaches Hospital doctors who recently voted unanimously to retain private health services,” Austin said, referring to a recent Medical Staff Council meeting.
Austin said it was disrespectful that staff had not been informed about their hospital’s future and that they were relying on chatter and hearsay.
“This is not a step forward,” she said. “The voices of the community and dedicated clinicians have been trampled and both deserved better.”
Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation NSW president Dr Nicholas Spooner said the transition to public control would be critical to addressing long-standing understaffing, overwork and exhaustion issues.
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“The people of NSW expect their government to lead, invest and deliver in public health, not delegate it to private providers who only care about profits,” Spooner said.
Healthscope is responsible for delivering services to public and private patients under the hospital’s model. The company went into receivership in May during negotiations to hand back Northern Beaches Hospital and sell its 37 other Australian hospitals.
In April, a NSW auditor-general’s report found the hospital failed to act on warnings about risks to patient safety and outcomes, while a separate independent probe found staff had a “heightened awareness” of the hospital’s contract with the government, which could create tensions between financial imperatives and clinical priorities.
NSW and federal governments have ruled out any bailout for Healthscope’s owner, Canadian-American investment firm Brookfield, which owes $1.6 billion to lenders. Health Minister Ryan Park has said the hospital will not lose any of its 488 beds or its status as a level-five tertiary hospital.
The premier’s office declined to comment.
With Alexandra Smith
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