Promising step for Private Healthcare in Tasmania, but ensuring access must remain a priority

This is good news for private patients who want access to private beds and a choice of doctors. 

However, we are deeply concerned about the potential restriction of lawful medical procedures in the private hospital sector as a result.

As the only private hospital provider in Hobart, Calvary has a responsibility to ensure patients retain access to legal healthcare options, including vasectomies, terminations, fertility-related procedures and gender-affirming surgery. Exemptions must be put in place to allow these procedures to continue to be performed in private hospitals in southern Tasmania; the public system simply does not have the capacity to absorb this additional workload.

It is also critical that the Tasmanian Government works strategically with private hospital providers to ensure public patients are treated within clinically indicated timeframes by continuing to outsource some work to the private sector, which also helps to keep this sector sustainable. 

More broadly, Tasmania must undertake a comprehensive and sustainable plan and review of how hospital services are provided and located within Hobart. We must maximise the utilisation of existing facilities and be clear about where and how care is delivered across southern Tasmania.

The same strategic approach is urgently required in northern Tasmania. In particular, clarity is needed around the future of the former Calvary hospital infrastructure in Launceston. 

Calvary must make clear its long-term strategic and capital investment plans for its Launceston hospitals, including what new or co-located private hospital investments are urgently needed to meet demand.>>>ENDS