An agreement has been made which will see Bethesda Health Care become the operator of Perth’s Mount Hospital.
Receivers were brought in last year when Healthscope, which owns the facility and 36 other private hospitals across the country, went into receivership.
The Western Australian government has announced it will provide financial assistance to Bethesda as part of an arrangement to see private services continue and give WA Health access to hospital services when required to ease pressure on the public system.
As part of the terms of the deal, the Mount Hospital will continue its operations with all existing staff to be offered employment with Bethesda.
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Bethesda is undertaking final due diligence before it formally takes over its operations by the end of August 2026.
This involves Bethesda obtaining a licence to operate the hospital and confirmation of the service delivery transition approach in close collaboration with Healthscope.
AMA WA President Dr Kyle Hoath described the news that the Mount Hospital would remain operating as a “win-win” situation.
“To have lost a hospital would have been a disaster, especially as we head into another tough winter, so this is a good outcome,” he told ABC radio.
“Bethesda has run a similar operation out of their hospital in Claremont, I think the combination is a good match, particularly if there is some capacity to see some of those excess beds used by the public sector.”
He said the announcement was “a little bit of a distraction” from the larger issue of hospital resourcing, capacity and staffing.
“This isn’t an acquisition by the state government so it doesn’t sufficiently or in any way increase what the public sector can offer and is a little bit of a distraction from that larger problem of where are we headed and what does the future of our health system look like in 10, 20 more years.”
The 170-bed private facility in the city’s CBD specialises in providing cardiology and cardiac surgery, as well as orthopaedics, neurosurgery, vascular surgery, and general surgery, supported by the state’s largest private critical care unit.
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