The Australian government has announced that all non-urgent surgery except for category 1 (operations classified as required within 30 days) and urgent category 2 (procedures required within 90 days) in private and state hospitals must be postponed from 1 April. Thousands of doctors, nurses and midwives from Australia’s private hospitals will be made available for redeployment within the public health system, as part of a package designed to prop up the sector and tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
The federal government will bear half of the cost of integrating the private hospital system with the public one in preparation for COVID-19.
Private hospitals will support the COVID-19 response through activities such as providing care for public patients, carrying out elective surgery, and providing wards and theatres to expand ICU capacity.
Private hospitals might also provide accommodation for quarantine and isolation cases where safety procedures are put in place, including passengers from cruise ships.
State and territory governments have partnership agreements where the federal government will contribute 50% of the funding.
After a major hospital group laid off employees, health minister Greg Hunt said; “The Australian public needs to have confidence that deferred activities, such as non-urgent elective surgery, will be able to be resumed and accelerated at the appropriate time. As the Australian government is underwriting your viability, you must retain the workforce for operation in your own facility or for redeployment across the health system or as directed by the government or states and territories including medical, nursing, clinical and ancillary staff. The agreement is only to ensure the viability of the sector, and not to generate profit or to assist with loan or debt repayment. The viability guarantee is conditional on the hospitals agreeing to open their books to show government funding is only being used for operational costs. The sector must agree to support the aged care sector and national disability insurance scheme recipients and must make its equipment, such as personal protective gear, available to the broader workforce. Failure of the private sector to follow directions from the state and territory governments to integrate with the public sector will lead to agreements being voided.”
The deals with 650 private hospitals could add 30,000 beds and 105,000 employees to the hospital system; but as all deals are local, hospitals vary in their keenness to be involved.
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