26 November 2015

Joondalup Health Campus shows the way on competition reform

In Parliament yesterday Peter spoke about the Harper Competition Policy Review recommendations and highlighted how our local hospital, Joondalup Health Campus, is considered a best practice model on using Public Private Partnerships to deliver better and more efficient health outcomes for all Australians:

"Yesterday the Turnbull Federal Liberal government released its response to the competition policy review headed by Professor Ian Harper. The review has become known more colloquially as the Harper review, after its main author. The review has given a road map to reform in important public policy areas in Australia that will help boost economic growth and create new jobs. It was heartening to see that the Federal government has accepted almost all of the recommendations of the review and has started on the dialogue necessary to bring the states and the public with it on the journey to achieve meaningful reform in the same way as our nation achieved meaningful reform in areas of competition policy in the 1990s and early 2000s. In the review, recommendations are made across a whole series of areas—health, transport, retail and many other areas in Australia in which the review found we could do better if we unleashed the competitive spirit and got rid of red tape and regulation and allowed the market to compete with public sector organisations in the delivery of those services.

Health is clearly one of the most important areas because of the phenomenal amount of State and Federal money that is spent on the delivery of public health services right across the nation. In the area of health, the Harper review praised one initiative in particular, and I am proud to say that it is an initiative in Perth’s northern suburbs in the North Metropolitan Region. The Harper review praised the Joondalup Health Campus as a paragon of virtue in mixing public and private health care and delivering good outcomes for patients and good outcomes for the state and the nation as a whole. That is a magnificent tick of success for the Joondalup Health Campus, which we know has been operating since 1996, when the previous Court Liberal government had the foresight to set it up as a public–private partnership and delivered a hospital to the area—the then outer suburban area of Joondalup—much quicker than it could have been delivered by just using public funds. Almost 20 years later, that hospital has one of the busiest public hospital emergency departments in the whole of Australia, treating about 100,000 public patients every year at no cost. It is delivered on an outcomes-based model under an agreement between the State government and Ramsay Health Care. Anyone who knows about the hospital knows that Ramsay does a fantastic job in delivering services. What better tick of approval is there than when the Federal government commissions a wide-ranging competition policy review across the whole of Australia, and we look at the delivery of innovative, flexible, efficient and effective health services, the Joondalup Health Campus is held up as the paragon of virtue?

Professor Harper highlighted in his review that the Joondalup model had been judged by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia as one of the nation’s best examples of a successful healthcare PPP. It highlighted that the Joondalup Health Campus consistently achieves A ratings in Health Department standards reviews. This is not some middling hospital; this is an A-grade hospital delivered under an innovative public–private partnership model. I congratulate Ramsay Health Care, the operators of the hospital, the hospital’s CEO, Kempton Cowan, and every single staff member, from the doctors to the nurses and all the other ancillary staff at that hospital, for achieving that sort of rating and for being held up as an example that others can emulate.

Of course, we know that that example has been extended recently with the official opening last week and the opening to patients this week of the Midland Health Campus in the eastern part of our city, which is being delivered by the St John of God Health Care organisation. Again, that is another example of flexible public–private partnerships that are delivering better outcomes for the use of our health dollars.

Also, as we know, the State government, in partnership with the operators of the Joondalup Health Campus and with the assistance of the Telethon Kids Institute, is expanding the Joondalup Health Campus by adding a brand-new, state-of-the-art paediatric wing to deliver high-quality paediatric services to the people of our growing northern suburbs so that people who live in Duncraig, Joondalup, Alkimos, Wanneroo, Two Rocks or Yanchep do not have to drive all the way into the city to access high-quality paediatric services but can go to their local hospital at Joondalup not just for an emergency, but to visit relatives who may be in hospital for a longer period. Anyone who has used the existing paediatric services—I know that my family has—can tell us that they are already state of the art, but the new investment into expanded facilities will provide more beds and will sort of future-proof the hospital for the growing needs of the people of the northern suburbs. It is a fantastic example of what can be achieved when we think outside the square and stop thinking in silos and think how best to deliver important public health services utilising scarce resources in the most efficient manner. It has had, as I said, a tick of approval from the competition tsar, Professor Ian Harper.

We should not rest on our laurels. The Harper review highlighted areas in which we need to do better, such as transport and retail and, of course, the old furphy that is long, long past its use-by date but is an example of something that is a relic of the past that should be condemned to the dustbin of history, the Potato Marketing Corporation. If we look at the success that we have had in an area as critical to the public as health, by being innovative and looking outside the square and applying the same thinking to all the other areas pointed out by the Harper competition policy review, we will be able to unleash the competitive spirit of Australians and unleash market forces in conjunction with the public sector to drive growth and innovation and to set up our nation for another 20 years of successful economic growth and successful employment opportunities for everyone that will maximise our prosperity. Well done to everyone involved in the Joondalup Health Campus and may it continue to be held up as a paragon of how we can do things better."