A WTF moment for NSW Health

Last week if you were placed on hold by the Maclean District Hospital switchboard, along with the canned Musak you would have heard a voice tell you that this hospital had three rooms with en suite and Austar television available for in-patients with private health insurance.

Now Maclean District Hospital is a public hospital in the North Coast Area Health Service and it is sometimes stretched for beds, so it is not unknown for wards to be culled for people to send home so that new (and sometimes more urgent) cases can be admitted.

Which makes one wonder - if a well-off retiree whose insurance is paying out to the area health service and an old-age pensioner on Medicare were to be assessed in such a cull, which one would be sent home?

If you picked the retiree as the patient most likely to be sent home I suspect that you wouldn't get the cigar - human nature and hospital bottom lines just don't work that way.

These three beds are not a good look for NSW Health and definitely not a good look for a Rudd Government seeking to work cooperatively with the states towards a better public health care system.