I welcome the Health Minister’s announcement today that our new public hospital will not be outsourcing its clinical services to the private sector. These will be delivered by Queensland Health staff and I believe this is the best outcome for good patient care and for integration with training with the Sunshine Coast University.
I appreciate that Treasury required that there be market testing of options as to how best to deliver the free public hospital services for patients in this new facility.
However, I was confident that the Health Minister would ensure that patients would be put first in this process and that this exercise would demonstrate that the Queensland Health doctors, nurses and other clinical staff would provide the best service delivery model for a tertiary level hospital of this size and complexity.
The Sunshine Coast University Hospital was always to provide free public hospital services. Some support services may still be outsourced to the private sector but these high level clinical services will be provided by Queensland Health staff.
