Health Minister Brad Hazzard calls Northern Beaches Hospital critics miserable
Health Minister Brad Hazzard has hit back at union chiefs who called for the State Government to buy back the privately-operated Northern Beaches Hospital, saying they’re just ‘miserable naysayers’.
Manly
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The health minister has slammed union bosses calling for Northern Beaches Hospital to be bought back by State Government describing them as “miserable naysayers” who need to give it a “fair go”.
Several union chiefs revealed a catalogue of problems at the privately-operated hospital at the opening hearing of a parliamentary inquiry on Monday.
They said the public-private model was likely to fail and it was best to buy it back sooner, rather than later.
The inquiry also heard that the operator Healthscope docked its own pay for poor performance, doctors have worked 19-hour days and there are probes into two possible catastrophic medical events since it opened last October.
Health Minister Brad Hazzard spoke out following Monday’s hearing after unions called for the hospital to be taken back under public control.
“It’s time the unions backed off their ideological destructiveness and try and support their members on the frontline,” he said.
Mr Hazzard said the hospital had not even been open a year and that people should give it a “fair go”.
However, Dr Tony Sara, President of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation of NSW told the hearing on Monday he believed the public-private model would fail, as six out of the eight Australian hospitals that had tried this type of partnership had to be taken back into public hands.
“The likelihood is that it will fail,” he told the hearing.
Dr Sara said PPP’s (public private partnerships) do not work.
In some cases he said hospitals had been bought back into public ownership due to concerns over public safety.
Dr Anthony Joseph, also from ASMOF, and who works at Royal North Shore Hospital, told the inquiry the government should bite the bullet and buy it back now.
He said there was no doubt that services at Northern Beaches Hospital have improved over the past couple of months but it was clear that a certain number of patients and GPs do not have confidence in the hospital.
Gerard Hayes secretary of the Health Services Union NSW said that there was still an “adversarial relationship” with Healthscope and described it as “working against a brick wall”.
While Brett Holmes from NSW Nurses and Midwives Association told the inquiry that the “running of public health should be under the control of the public system”.
“We see what happens when you’ve got two different lots of staff and management and frankly it is not pretty…” he said.
Mr Hazzard cited a number of successful public private partnerships (PPP) including the Hawkesbury Hospital.
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“I think it’s time the unions got off the back of the hospital and recognised their own staff have complained about the miserable way they are going about their business,” he said.
“They are miserable naysayers. They have energetically worked at bringing down PPP for as long as I can remember.”
The Wakehurst MP said he had been heartened by relatives, friends and neighbours who had received treatment at the new $600m Frenchs Forest hospital who had said the staff and facilities were incredible.
He said unions should give hospital staff and administrators “a fair go and stop being part of a Labor driven attack on this type of model.”