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Tasmania’s public health system relying more heavily on private providers, figures show
Tasmania’s public health system is relying more heavily on private providers, with new figures showing the number of procedures outsourced to the private sector has more than doubled in two years.
Right to Information documents show more than 4,200 public patients were sent to private hospitals and clinics for their procedure at taxpayers’ expense in the last financial year.
That was up from 2,764 the year before and just 1,418 in 2013-14.
In October, the State Government set up a panel of private providers, including two Victorian-based services, to perform up to $25 million in elective surgery.
Since then, they have reaped almost $5 million in taxpayer funds and performed 850 surgeries on public patients between them.
Public hospitals have also benefited from the one-off investment in elective surgery from the Commonwealth, performing more than 11,000 elective surgeries in the same period …