[Greens-Media] NSW moves one step closer to a privatised public hospital system

[Lauren Waldon]

NSW moves one step closer to a privatised public hospital system

Media release:  2 May 2013

Health Minister Jillian Skinner is pushing ahead with a Northern Beaches hospital development that is poorly located and privately operated.

Greens NSW MP John Kaye said: "This hospital is in the wrong location and it will result in the inevitable closure of Mona Vale and the privatisation of public hospital services.

"Health Minister Jillian Skinner's plan has implications that reach well beyond the Northern Beaches. She has foreshadowed the Frenchs Forest model is the blueprint for Coalition health care delivery.

"The hospital site is not only too close to Royal North Shore but access from many parts of the Northern beaches will be over roads that are all too often deeply congested.

"Northern Beaches residents will not only face longer travel times if they have a heart attack but when they finally arrive at their hospital, it will not be publicly operated. They are unlikely to receive the same level of care they would get at a facility like Mona Vale where profit is not part of the motivation.

"The model is much worse than a Public Private Partnership. It is effectively full privatisation, at least for the first twenty years.

"After the private operator takes their cut, either services will suffer or the state will pay more.

"Despite two years of promises of a secure future for the main Northern Beaches hospital, Mona Vale is to be downgraded. It is inevitable that given its location right at the ocean front, the site will sooner or later be declared surplus and sold off to a developer.

"The O'Farrell government is downgrading a public hospital and replacing it with a private facility that will be paid to treat public patients. For the Northern beaches and for all of NSW this is a very poor exchange.

"Health Minister Jillian Skinner is edging the government away from its responsibility to operate public hospitals.

"This is the next step from Labor's Public Private Partnership at Royal North Shore. It is the thin edge of the wedge on the way to the government abandoning its responsibility to provide each community with access to a public hospital.

"If the O'Farrell government gets away with the Northern Beaches private provision model, it will have launched the state on the path to a fully privatised public hospital system," Dr Kaye said.

John Kaye
Greens NSW MP

P: (02) 9230 2668 | F: facebook.com/john.kaye.mlc<http://www.facebook.com/john.kaye.mlc> | T: @johnkgreens<twitter.com/johnkgreens> | W: www.johnkaye.org.au<http://www.johnkaye.org.au>
Mail: Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

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