APHA ‘dismayed’ by call to share private hospital data on the regular

3 minute read


The unprecedented access to commercially sensitive data last year was a ‘one-off’, says the association.


The Australian Private Hospitals Association is not keen to recommend that its members release their commercially sensitive private hospital data to the government, after last year’s “one-off” amounted to naught.

Last year, the association asked its members to provide the federal government with access to data from their private hospitals.

The unprecedented move was a “one-off” as part of the federal inquiry into private hospital viability, according to the association’s CEO Brett Heffernan.

Mr Heffernan said, as part of the arrangement, that APHA had expected the commercially sensitive information provided would be used to support critical reforms and workable short-term solutions to address the $3 billion shortfall in private hospital funding.

Given that “no action or even worthwhile measures” to address the crisis had eventuated, the suggestion made by the government in the Private Hospital Data Collection Framework Consultation Paper to collect proprietary information from private hospitals as a matter-of-course was “highly inappropriate”, he wrote in APHA’s response to the consultation paper.

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Mr Heffernan said that the consultation paper, the final summary report of the financial health check and the governmental media releases confirmed that the goodwill that the association’s members had displayed in providing the data had “not been reciprocated”.

“The information provided has fallen on deaf ears,” he said.

APHA was not inclined to recommend that its members comply with the “onerous and unreasonable request” to share the data as laid out in the new framework.

Instead, Mr Heffernan called on the department to re-establish and restore funding for the Private Health Establishments Collection (PHEC).

“There is a clear and present need to ensure the adequate monitoring of viability and condition of the private hospital sector, as the public summary document for the Private Hospitals Health Check confirmed last year,” said Mr Heffernan.

“This can be achieved without subjecting private hospitals to further onerous data collections, let alone the unrealistic request for them to provide commercially sensitive materials as a matter-of-course.

“We have consistently proposed common sense short and medium-term solutions, including recommending that the Commonwealth re-establish and restore funding for the PHEC by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to ensure the adequate, reliable, and consistent monitoring of the viability and condition of the private hospital sector.”

Mr Heffernan said the PHEC process before 2017-18 allowed for reliable and trusted data collection.

“The absence of this collection has made it increasingly difficult to maintain stock of the challenges to the sector and costs,” he said.

“Existing methodologies can help reinvigorate this data collection without a time lag that would likely arise out of the development of a new framework.

“We encourage the department to re-establish the PHEC instead of seeking to develop a new onerous data collection framework.”

By reestablishing the PHEC, the government would save taxpayer dollars by not reinventing the wheel, reduce the burden on hospitals and improve efficiency.

“Where there is already a comprehensive and previously successful framework for data collection, it is unreasonable and symptomatic of bureaucratic ineptitude, to consult on developing another,” said Mr Heffernan.

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