France might know a thing or two about food, wine and fashion, but Australia’s biggest private hospital operator believes it also has a flair for health care.
Ramsay Health Care chief executive Christopher Rex believes the partnerships between the French government and private hospitals is a winning formula that could be adopted in Australia.
Mr Rex says that to cope with the increasing demands on Australia’s public hospitals, it made sense for private operators to build hospitals and be paid by state governments to run them for public patients.
Ramsay already has a joint venture with the Queensland government to build a hospital on the Sunshine Coast, which will treat both public and private patients for seven years before reverting to a public hospital.
Mr Rex said he envisaged such partnerships becoming common in the future and develop into private operators building much-needed public hospitals and then signing long-term contracts with governments to run them.
“The hospital would be owned and operated by the private sector, but for all intents and purposes they would be public hospitals for public patients,” Mr Rex, who has discussed his idea with state and federal ministers, told AAP.
“It shouldn’t matter to a publicly funded patient who owns the building and pays the staff as long as they are getting access to good-quality services,” he said. “In France, no one cares. About 40 per cent of the hospitals are privately owned but all the income comes from the state.”
Ramsay has developed a fancy for French hospitals, having bought a 57 per cent stake in Parisian private hospital operator Groupe Proclif SAS in 2010 and a hospital in the town of Bourg-en-Bresse, which lies to the north of Lyon.
Unveiling the company’s full year profit result on Thursday, Mr Rex said the acquisitions had already begun contributing to earnings and that Ramsay was on the hunt for more.
“We are very comfortable now to start our acquisition program to build a much bigger business in that country,” he said. “I’d be disappointed if the company weren’t announcing additional acquisitions over the course of the next few months.”
Shareholders certainly weren’t disappointed by the 34 per cent rise in Ramsay’s net profit, which hit $198.4 million for the 12 months to June 30.
The company forecast earnings growth of 10 to 12 per cent this financial year.
Ramsay shares jumped 71 cents , or 4.22 per cent, to $17.72 on Thursday.
Much of the earnings growth came from improvements to its existing hospitals in Australia.
Earnings from Australian hospitals lifted 14 per cent, with Ramsay saying it will spend $100 million on average a year on developing its services to keep up with demand.
The company has 117 hospitals and day surgeries across Australia, Britain, France and Indonesia.
