You may have seen Women's Health Tasmania (WHT), Equality Tasmania and the AMA in the news since Christmas Eve 2025, talking about concerns around the sale of the Hobart Private Hospital to Calvary Health Care (Calvary).
The sale has now been approved by the ACCC and is expected to be finalised in November this year.
WHT supports the sale in the absence of any other opportunity to keep the hospital operating for Tasmanians to access private health care. The private hospital also has an emergency pathway which helps take some of the pressure off the Royal Hobart Hospital next door and is sometimes used by the public hospital for overflow beds when required. It is better to have the hospital open rather than closed, which is reportedly the only other option under consideration.
What the health sector is worried about is that once the Hobart Private Hospital is sold to Calvary there will be no other alternative in southern Hobart for overnight care - all three private hospitals will be owned by Calvary and operate under the Catholic Health Australia Code of Ethical Standards
Under this Code, there are several procedures that Calvary does not allow in its theatres. This includes surgical terminations, surgeries for contraceptive purposes, gender affirming surgeries and IVF surgeries.
After the sale there will be no overnight hospital in southern Tasmania, that will deliver these surgeries. And there are very few options across the rest of the state, with Calvary operating the two major private hospitals in Launceston as well.
How does this affect Tasmanians?
The waiting list for surgeries in the public system is already stretched and will be put under further pressure to pick up the procedures that Calvary won't provide.
For surgical terminations in Tasmania, our public hospital only delivers these surgeries up to 14 weeks, although our legislation allows them up to 16 weeks in Tasmania. This means that there will be almost nowhere to access a surgical termination between 14 to 16 weeks in our state unless the public system is able to create an alternative pathway for this.
It is the same for gender affirming surgeries, with no alternative pathway currently in place after the sale of Hobart Private Hospital apart from traveling interstate.
What needs to be done?
The government has said on several occasions that all services will continue after the sale of Hobart Private Hospital but so far, the only alternative pathways confirmed are for IVF surgeries.
It is inevitable that the public system will need to pick up the majority of these services or more Tasmanians will need to travel interstate to receive this kind of health care.
While we appreciate that the government is trying to ensure service continuity, the public system will need additional support to absorb the services that Calvary will not deliver.
The public system will need additional resources, more training and additional theatre capacity in the coming year, at a time when the system is already under funding pressure and our surgery wait lists are getting longer.
WHT will keep working with government, health providers and consumers to ensure that these services are accessible and affordable for Tasmanians.
Image: Barrylb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons