Minns government must take control of Northern Beaches public hospital

The public should be confident that when they enter any public hospital they will receive safe and competent healthcare. However, an investigation by the NSW auditor-general into the Northern Beaches Hospital has revealed the public-private partnership ethos of profits before care failed patients and the Minns government’s refusals to step in even after children’s deaths rang alarm bells.

Auditor-General Bola Oyetunji found massive systemic problems at the hospital and highlighted how repeated requests to the government to take over its troubled public services had been rejected.

The hospital is both a public and private hospital controlled in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands. Its owner, Healthscope, was sold for $4 billion in a sharemarket takeover to Canadian private equity group Brookfield. Healthscope operates another 37 private hospitals across Australia.

In 2018, public-private partnerships were all the rage among all levels of government when then-premier Gladys Berejiklian opened the hospital. Designed to serve some 260,000 people, the 488-bed $2.14 billion facility was to be operated by Healthscope under a 20-year contract to deliver public services including maternity and the emergency department, and was meant to showcase the doings of a can-do government.

The hospital opened amid industrial disputes, botched surgeries and equipment shortages. The COVID-19 toll may have shattered faith in privatisation, but three tragedies at the hospital exposed the facility was not up to providing public services: In 2021, 14-year-old Joshua Gill died after being discharged from mental health treatment at the hospital, and last September two-year-old Joe Massa died after being left in an emergency department chair for 2½ hours despite showing clear signs of a life-threatening condition.

The Joe Massa tragedy only became public last February, the same month Leah Pitman and Dustin Atkinson lost their newborn Harper. In an ABC interview, the couple were critical of delays due to the hospital not offering 24/7 operating theatres, which senior staff later told them would not be “economically feasible” for the facility. “If we drove half an hour down the street to Royal North Shore, Harper would be alive,” Dustin Atkinson told the ABC. “It’s purely the fact that we ended up at Northern Beaches Hospital on the days that their theatre isn’t open 24/7 that cost our daughter her life.”

Healthscope made repeated requests – in November and December 2023 – to return the public portion of the hospital to public hands 14 years ahead of schedule, but the Minns government stayed its hand until forced to act – last month it announced the introduction of legislation (dubbed “Joe’s Law”) to ban future public-private partnerships from being imposed on acute public hospitals.

Healthscope has a track record of operating mostly small, private hospitals, but starting a general hospital in a big city with an emergency department alongside a large existing state government hospital system has proved beyond its capabilities.

Public confidence must be restored to ensure no more lives are lost. A parliamentary inquiry will further examine the safety and quality of services at the hospital, with public submissions closing next month. The Minns government must not wait and should now take over the Northern Beaches Hospital’s public hospital services.

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