Private hospitals often have capacity that could be used to treat public patients. Photo: Wikimedia commons.
The peak body representing 80 Catholic hospitals across Australia has called on government to subsidise private hospitals to take in patients on public hospital waitlists as a means to address the rural health crisis.
Catholic Health Australia (CHA) has proposed this in a pre-federal budget submission among a suite of suggested reforms to “sustain and improve vital hospital and aged care services and patient care for the millions of people living in rural and remote Australia”.
“Due to smaller patient volumes and higher costs, regional and remote hospital and aged care services are under the most severe pressures, including financial and workforce,” said CHA CEO Jason Kara.
“We want to ensure the one in three Australians who live outside a capital city have the same choice, access and quality of care as everyone else.”
The CHA submission said state and territory governments could utilise private hospital capacity for public hospital waiting lists.
“This could involve additional federal funding to encourage states and territories to meet performance targets,” the submission stated.
CHA also argued that regional, rural, and remote private hospitals often struggled due to smaller patient volumes and higher operational costs, calling for further government support to keep them viable.
Mark Burdack, a health policy expert and CEO of Healthy Communities Foundation Australia, which runs GP clinics in rural areas, said such policies should be considered, but are not long-term solutions.
“We need to have a suite of solutions and part of that is optimising the utilisation of the resources we already have, which includes private hospitals,” he said.
“The private hospital has capabilities that may be available to government … but we need to make sure the health system doesn’t become so expensive due to privatisation.
“I think the longer-term solution is how we cover and restore primary [GP] care in rural towns. We know the reason people are turning up to hospitals is because they can’t get access to primary care.”
Mr Burdack says the lack of support for GP services means a lot of health funding is wasted.
“We have a system where, instead of paying $50 to treat someone before a condition becomes serious, we are paying up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover someone in hospital after they’ve already become acute.
“We have seen a significant investment in primary health infrastructure in metropolitan cities but the government and other parties don’t seem to have any concept of solutions for rural towns.”
CHA also argued that access to aged care remained a critical issue in regional, rural, and remote areas. It urged the government to invest in capital funding to ensure older Australians, regardless of where they lived, could access safe and high-quality care.
“After years of losses, services simply don’t have the money to expand, upgrade, or refurbish to meet growing demand. The government must boost investment in capital to fund crucial infrastructure upgrades and builds, such as staff accommodation, to ensure viability of services in regional, rural and remote areas,” Mr Kara said.
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