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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-10-16 Daily Xml
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Mental Health Services

Ms PRATT (Frome) (14:42): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. How does the government respond to comments by the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists that they are gravely concerned about the state of private hospital psychiatry and the mental health units in Australia? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: Hundreds of mental health beds have been lost across Australia due to a string of closures in the private psychiatric sector, and the Mental Health Australia chief executive said, and I quote:

Government must, in particular, urgently improve funding models and pursue workforce reforms to attract, retain and support the mental health workforce.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:42): I am happy to address the issue in terms of private psychiatric hospitals across Australia. Of course, I think the government that the member is referring to in that quote, that that organisation is referring to, is the federal government in terms of the funding models.

We know that there are issues in terms of private hospitals and their funding across the country. This is something where the Federal Minister for Health, Ageing and Disability, the Hon. Mark Butler, has established a task force working with industry to try to address. One of the most acute areas of those funding issues that private hospitals are facing is in terms of psychiatric hospitals, mental health hospitals across the country. Clearly, there are a number of elements to that. One of the elements is in terms of psychiatrists and their desire to be providing those services to psychiatric hospitals in the same way that they have done historically, which is a key barrier right across the country.

In South Australia, the member may know that actually we have a different model for the one private psychiatric hospital in Adelaide, which is the Adelaide Clinic, which is owned by Ramsay Health Care. They operate a different financial model to every other private psychiatric hospital in the country, as I understand it. My understanding from them is that has meant that they are on a slightly more sustainable footing compared with many other of those private psychiatric hospitals.

I think the most recent one that has hit trouble has been a hospital in Hobart, but there have been others across the country that have expressed their concerns at the moment. We will continue to work with the federal government as they are progressing these reforms to address the viability of private hospitals. A lot of this comes down to the interaction between private hospitals, Medicare and private health insurance and the payouts and the funding sources through each.

Clearly, there are some areas where there are very good returns for particular types of procedures where some procedures are very profitable. My understanding is that is particularly in terms of orthopaedics and ophthalmologists, where private hospitals are able to receive significant return on those services, but there are other areas, including mental health, where those returns are a lot lower.

So what is being worked through at the federal level at the moment is trying to recalibrate those payments to make sure that they are on a more even footing and to make sure that all of those services are going to be sustainable into the future.

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