Hospitals ‘breaking rules’ on surgeries

HEALTH fund members are being allowed to queue jump, avoiding lengthy waiting times for elective surgery by cash strapped public hospitals in breach of Medicare rules.

New data reveals on average health fund members are waiting just 22 days for elective surgery in a public hospital compared to the 44 days public patients wait.

For some procedures the difference in surgery wait times is even larger.

Half of all public patients waiting for a hysterectomy waited 275 days compared to just 87 days for private health insurance-funded patients in 2017-18, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) data shows.

Privately insured patients using public hospitals got hip and knee replacements within just 29 days while publicly funded patients waited 88 days.

The (AIHW) reports that in public hospitals “the time within which 50 per cent of public patients were admitted for their awaited procedure was longer for all of the 25 most common intended procedures compared with private health insurance-funded patients”.

State and federal hospital agreements enshrine the principle that public hospital admission is meant to be based on clinical need, not health insurance status, but this data shows cash strapped public hospitals are breaking rules.

It makes a mockery of the $6 billion government private health insurance subsidy meant to encourage health fund members to use private hospitals to relieve the pressure on public hospitals.