Calvary Health Care’s National Chief Executive Officer Martin Bowles said Calvary Lenah Valley Hospital would take the necessary steps alongside the government to make sure mothers and babies were cared for in Hobart safely.

Mr Bowles said the announcement by Healthscope had put profit before care, creating enormous uncertainty for mothers-to-be, their families, and the obstetric and maternity workforce, while adding pressure to not-for-profit and public operators.

“Calvary has been delivering compassionate and high-quality care to expectant mothers in Hobart for 80 years, and we are committed to supporting the changing and increasing needs of the community,” said Mr Bowles.

“We have had positive discussions with the Tasmanian Government, and we know to ensure a safe and sustainable maternity service into the future, and absorb the unexpected increased demand for our service, will require midwifery workforce attraction and retention strategies, investment in necessary infrastructure upgrades, and sufficient private insurer funding for maternity.”

Calvary Lenah Valley Hospital provides a broad range of services to the Hobart community. There will be no change to these services as we work to increase capacity of maternity services. A workforce transition plan is a critical step to growing a safe service and that begins this week.

Calvary is concerned by this latest announcement by yet another for-profit organisation that simply abandons patients seeking access to less profitable healthcare services.

“Effectively, this makes way for operators to cherry-pick services that are profitable and improve the bottom-line for shareholders. I ask what services will be dropped next to benefit the profit margin?"

Mr Bowles said the private insurers also had a role to play in ensuring sustainable private maternity services.

“As a not-for-profit, we invest everything into the services we deliver and private health insurers need to acknowledge if they want to be able to offer services to their policy holders, they need to reset pricing for private providers to make services sustainable – particularly when it comes to low-margin activity like maternity.”

Calvary is committed to providing maternity services that assist women to have healthy and safe birthing experiences and is working closely with dedicated doctors and midwives to reach a positive outcome for patients.