A private mental health hospital in Brisbane will close within days going into administration after almost half a century. Toowong Private sees about three thousand patients each year including veterans and emergency workers. There are warnings seven other psychiatric hospitals across Australia are also at risk of collapse.
00:00For Rebecca Kussner to Wong, private has been a place of healing.
00:09You shed a lot of tears in there and obviously laughter and jokes.
00:15After being medically discharged from the Navy, the 37-year-old was so unwell she could barely leave the house.
00:23Over the past decade, an inpatient stay, PTSD programs and ongoing support have helped her.
00:31It gave me a family pretty much after everything has happened.
00:36But the 58-bed facility with more than 150 staff will close its doors for good within days, unable to stay afloat financially.
00:46Outraged former patients and supporters are rallying.
00:53Under the public system, I was going to die. This hospital saved me.
00:58I don't think I'd be here without it.
01:00We don't need this sort of facility to go. We need to build more of them.
01:05The Greens want government intervention.
01:08We've been calling on the state government to step in and buy this hospital. There's precedent for this.
01:12The peak body for private hospitals says this situation could be replicated across the country with another seven psychiatric hospitals on the verge of collapse.
01:23It won't say where because it doesn't want to alarm patients and staff.
01:28They want insurance companies to pay hospitals more.
01:32The health insurance industry is too busy pocketing profits from people's premiums rather than funding their health care.
01:38Insurers strongly reject that.
01:41Payments from health funds to hospitals overall have gone up by nearly 8% in the last year, which is well above inflation.
01:50To Wong Private's administrator EY says it's understood the hospital was operating at a loss for several years.
01:58Private hospitals say the Commonwealth must reform the system.
02:03It can no longer fudge it. It needs to act.
02:05And the Minister has already given voice to what needs to happen here in terms of regulating the health insurers.
02:10And we would expect him to do so with haste.
02:13The Health Minister, Mark Butler, says he's called for insurers to urgently increase the amount they pay out for hospital services.
02:21As To Wong winds down, alternative care is being sought for its patients.
02:27They should be doing more to keep these hospitals open.
