Private patients a drain

INDEPENDENT health analyst Martyn Goddard says private patients treated in Tasmania’s public hospitals are ripping at least $43 million from the state’s health system every year.

Analysis from Mr Goddard released to the Mercury found each private patient cost the system $1800. He said more than 25 per cent of the Royal Hobart Hospital’s admitted patients were fee-paying private patients.

Private patients did not attract the activity-based commonwealth funding attached to public patients because the Federal Government already contributed to insurance premiums, Mr Goddard said.

And only 5 per cent of pri- vate insurance rebates went to paying for private patients’ care in public hospitals. The rest went to the senior clinicians eligible for the Private Practice Scheme, with payments sold as an incentive to work in the public system, he said.

“According to an authoritative internal estimate, each patient treated under the Private Practice Scheme involves a loss to the hospital of an average of $1800, compared with treating the same patient as public,” Mr Goddard said.

“Overall, this involves an annual loss to the state’s public hospitals of about $43 million.”

Mr Goddard said some surgeons in Tasmania were earning more than $1 million a year as a result of the scheme.

A Tasmanian Health Service spokesman said the THS could not comment on Mr Goddard’s figures because it did not have a copy of his report.

“The Medical Practitioners Award recognises that some doctors working in the public system have access to private patient income and others don’t,” the THS spokesman said.