ACT minister denies 'cruel' refusal to accept NSW patients in Canberra hospitals

Orthopaedic surgeon Professor Paul Smith, who resigned from Canberra Hospital earlier this year, said the ACT was not letting South Coast residents join orthopaedic surgery waitlists.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said NSW patients were not refused access to services not available in their region.

Dr Smith told ABC radio he no longer sees public patients at an outreach clinic in Moruya, south of Batemans Bay, because Canberra hospitals would not accept referrals.

"If I was ever going to submit a request for admission, it would be refused," he said.

"It's a bit cruel because a lot of people that [lived their working life and] paid their taxes and so forth in Canberra, moved down to the South Coast to retire, and then to be told they can't get on to a public waiting list in Canberra.

"I think there's a great deal of injustice in that."

Canberra Hospital is a large hospital that NSW pays to provide specialised care for people in southern NSW.

Ms Stephen-Smith has said as early as January that Canberra would stop accepting NSW patients for services that are already provided in their region.

Wollongong, Shoalhaven, Shellharbour and Milton-Ulladulla Hospital offer orthopaedic surgery, according to the NSW Health website.

Dr Smith is one of six orthopaedic surgeons who resigned from their part-time public hospital work in protest of pay and policy changes. Three returned after negotiations with management.

In an article published by the Australian Medical Association, surgeon Sindy Vrancic said she understood that Canberra Health Services was "actively blocking" referrals of patients from NSW.

"Now these remote surgeons will need to decide where in NSW they will send their uninsured complex shoulder patients," she said in June.

Dr Vrancic said she had more than 75 patients on an elective surgery waitlist when she left.

Dr Smith said before he left, there were more than 800 patients waiting for a joint replacement, but the ACT government only paid for 400 replacements each year.

A government spokesperson told the ABC the elective surgery waitlists for orthopaedics had stayed the same since the resignations, and that a new unit director - replacing Dr Smith - had been hired.

NSW residents accounted for 25,800, or 17 per cent, of hospitalisations to Canberra public hospitals in 2023-24.

At the same time, ACT residents accounted for only 4300, less than 1 per cent, of hospitalisations in NSW public hospitals.

The government has said one in four ACT hospital patients are NSW residents but they were actually referring to acute public hospital service activity, a measurement that takes into account the complexity of patient admissions.

MORE HEALTH:

Under the ACT and NSW cross-border agreement, the neighbours pay each other to treat residents of the other jurisdiction.

But the ACT government says it is getting a raw deal from NSW because it costs more to treat patients in a smaller jurisdiction, and NSW does not contribute to capital works.

The government is trying to negotiate a higher price.

A union representative has told The Canberra Times NSW doctors and paramedics prefer to send patients to the ACT because they are better resourced and more likely to accept them.