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The Secretary of the Department of Health and Aged Care Blair Comley PSM has told Catholic Health Australia’s national conference that the government was wary of wading into the funding dispute between private health care providers and the insurance industry.
“We have to be clear that these are commercial negotiations between parties, and the government has to be cautious about getting into the middle of that,” he told the conference.
Mr Comley said the data that the government was collecting as part of its private hospital review had underlined the complexity of the market. He said healthcare profitability varied widely depending on factors like geography, hospital size, the power of the insurance provider, the services provided, and a myriad of other factors.
The current funding crisis facing the country’s private health care sector is growing more acute. Figures released by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority on Tuesday showed that the amount insurers are giving back to patients as benefits is continuing to decline.
Mr Comley said there was a fine balance between containing costs and encouraging innovation and that broad or unnuanced intervention risked causing more harm than benefit.
The government has recently responded to the crisis in the aged care sector by underwriting a substantial wage rise for workers in the sector, and the review into private hospital viability is a critical first step to achieving a sustainable sector.
Mr Comley also used the conference to outline the foundations of what he hopes will become a long-term health strategy for Australia.
He said the Department had four top-line priorities: promoting prevention and early intervention; reducing health and aged care inequalities; enhancing system integration, including the role of the private sector; and leveraging available health tech and digital, both as an enabler and as a disruptor of existing health care options.
“We should be thinking of a system on a 15, 20, 30-year time horizon because time horizons really matter in health.” he said, highlighting training for much of the healthcare workforce needed a 10-year lead time.
He said any strategy needed to be capacious enough to allow for changing tactical priorities as governments and ministers change. “There’s no real tension between a framework that thinks about the 15- or 20-year time horizon, is mindful of the government of the day, but also gives you a sense of true north.”
In August, Catholic Health Australia released a position paper showing many private hospitals are struggling to remain viable.
