Emergency departments currently see very large numbers of patients classified as non-urgent or semi-urgent. For a long time I’ve argued that a significant barrier to substantial reform in healthcare in Australia is that the main players are too captive to their membership bases or special interests to be willing to leave their corners and engage in meaningful discussion. I sometimes toss around the idea of getting Australia’s healthcare leaders in a room and asking them to nominate one major policy development they are willing to embrace that specifically goes against their self-interest. As the CEO of one of Australia’s leading providers of public and private hospitals, something my organisation has been doing for close to 180 years, I’m happy to get the ball rolling. If Australia is to make the most of its healthcare future, it will likely need fewer hospitals, not more. There I said it. I half […]