Ashford Hospital operator vows wards will stay open
The CEO of the operator of Ashford and Flinders Private hospitals has vowed there will be no staff redundancies after appointing receivers yesterday.
Patients and staff at dozens of hospitals across Australia have been assured it’s business as usual as their embattled private health operator enters receivership.
Healthscope chief executive Tino La Spina vowed to the company’s 19,000 staff that all its hospitals, including four in South Australia, would remain open and there would be no redundancies.
The provider, which operates 37 hospitals in every state and territory, was handed a lifeline on Monday when the Commonwealth Bank provided a $100 million loan to support the embattled company.
Westpac agreed to continue to provide assistance to help receivers sell the business.
Receivers were appointed, led by McGrathNicol partner Keith Crawford who said the focus was to engage “constructively with all key stakeholders to ensure uninterrupted operation of Healthscope hospitals”.
The company is Australia’s second-largest private hospital operator and has been owned by North American private equity firm Brookfield since 2019.
Healthscope said while the parent entity had entered receivership, the operational business – which runs the hospitals – had not.
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Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the move was no surprise and made clear taxpayers would not be footing the bill for the healthcare provider.
“There’s already very significant taxpayer support that goes into the operation of the private hospital system,” he said.
“I want to be clear I expect to see an orderly sale process eventuate from this decision to any owner with no impact on patients and hardworking staff.”
Patients with scheduled births or surgeries at the company’s hospitals should feel confident their procedures would go ahead as planned, Butler said.
He said the company had enough funds for “several months of operations” while the sale process begins.
“Healthscope will be a very different beast going forward in terms of the ownership and ultimately perhaps operations,” Butler said.
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La Spina said he was confident the business would be sold as a “whole”, rather than offloading individual hospitals.
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“We have 10 non-binding indicative offers – some are for the whole and others potentially could include the whole under certain circumstances. That is the focus,” he said.
“The receivers and management share the same goal of maintaining our market-leading standards of patient care and protecting the business, the hospitals and our amazing people.”
La Spina flagged the company’s excessive secured debt and high rental costs of hospital sites as factors in receivers being called in.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation said it had been working with members and stakeholders to navigate the financial difficulties and uncertainty
Healthscope operates the Northern Beaches Hospital in Sydney, Hobart Private Hospital, Darwin Private Hospital and Knox Private Hospital in Melbourne.
In South Australia, the company runs Ashford Hospital, Flinders Private Hospital, Griffith Rehabilitation Hospital and The Memorial Hospital.
In May 2024, then-chief executive Greg Horan said even though the sector was “facing considerable headwinds”, providing the “best care” remained a top priority.
The company came under scrutiny following the death of two-year-old Joe Massa at the Northern Beaches Hospital in September 2024.
The toddler died after being wrongly triaged and waiting two hours for a hospital bed.
He was later transferred to Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick following a cardiac arrest but succumbed to brain damage.
Healthscope moved to shut down maternity services at Darwin Private Hospital and Hobart Private Hospital earlier in 2025.
