Privatization of the Public Hospitals Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Privatization of the Public Hospitals. Answer: Introduction The primary focus of the report is to analyze the situation that has risen due to the decision taken by the NSW Coalition Government who decided to privatize five major regional hospitals. The report furthers concentrates on the effects of the decision taken by the NSW government. The primary objective of the report is to study the objective of the situation, the variable perspectives, the attitudes towards the situation, and the ideological viewpoints of the issue, the scientific rigor of the situation and finally the report analysis the other evidences that has been provided by the media to influence the audience. It includes the evidences and processes that have been adopted by the media to convince the audience to go against the situation. In the end of the report, an effective suggestion has been provided which aims at the poor effects of the privatization of all the public hospitals. The objective of the article The prime objective of the article is to analyze the outcomes of the privatization of the public hospitals. The NSW coalition government took the decision of the privatizing five major public hospitals. The objective of the article is to prove that the privatization has caused grave effects in the end. Before taking such decision, they should have at least informed the NSWNMA. The selling off the public hospitals to the private ones has neglected many aspects. It did not bother about the staffs and the patients of the hospitals. The article contains the attitudes of the heads towards their staffs, which is completely undesirable (Fox 2013). They have turned off their heads from the responsibilities of the staffs and patients of the nursing home. The report includes the instances where it is mentioned that the privatization of the hospitals has always failed in the past in Australia. In the article, there are instances of the situation, which states the dire consequence, which was fac ed by the public hospitals, as they had to report their progress to the investors. They had to give them large business, as they had to give the investors satisfaction of their investment. This was a complicated process and it is not meant for the common people. The aim of the public hospital is to make the health care system affordable and feasible for the common people. The privatization of the government hospitals brought a change in the aim of the public hospitals. The article served the objective of the drawbacks that came forward with the privatization of the five major public hospitals, named Maitland, Wyoung, Goulburn, Shellharbour and Bowral (Tiemann and Schreygg 2012.). Balance of Perspectives The article consists of many perspectives. From the perspective of NSW coalition Government, they thought of their benefit and indulged themselves in the partnership with the private shareholders of the hospitals. Their decision has been highly demoralized by the General Secretary of the NSWNMA, Brett Holmes who claimed that they were not even informed of this. They were wrong from the perspective of the NSW Nurses and Midwives` Association (Barlow, Roehrich and Wright 2013). The media brought the grave fault that has been done by them by not concerning their decision with the public authorities. They gave no guarantee of jobs to their employees. They left their employees with a dark future. Treatment in private health centers has always remained a costly affair. The patients could not afford the treatment in the private hospitals. This was another problem raised by the media. At the end, the public organizations had to pay a huge amount to the private heads and the investors. The di re consequence was warned to the NSW Health Ministers. They paid no attention to the warning. However, the NSW should have taken into account certain perspectives to avoid these issues. They should have thought about the patients and the staffs before taking such initiative (Tang, et al. 2013). The public hospitals are set to offer proper medication to those who cannot afford costly medical facilities. Analyzing from this perspective the privatization of the governmental hospitals is not an advantageous approach (Roehrich, Lewis and George 2014). Attitude Privatization of Public Hospitals will cause severe problems and affect the staff directly. Patients will also suffer to a huge extent, as they have the risk of reduction in their proper and safe care. The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) is selling off their hospitals and becoming privatized. They even have the agenda of turning more public hospitals in to private ones through partnerships. This is the loss of the governments accountability, as private hospitals are more involved in managing the money of the government (Cox and Procter 2016). Private operators have a duty towards their shareholders and thus, this gives rise to the financial responsibility in order to deliver profit over investment. Public hospitals are more concerned about their patients well being as compared to private hospitals. Moreover, the treatment becomes expensive when it comes to private hospitals, which further depends on their profitability, budget and determining what would be the staffing l evels (Blackman et al. 2015). Private firms are profit based; therefore, they wont keep on providing unprofitable services for a longer period of time. This could even lead to the lack of continuation, with some particular patients who may feel that their health providers have changed. Maintaining a continuity or consistency is particularly crucial or important for the older patients. It inspires confidence and trust as well. It can be simply maintained by the staffs knowing their patients name. Increase in the privatization is leading to the lack of continuity, which questions the customers satisfaction (Bundey 2014). This led to hard hitting campaigns against the privatization of the public hospitals, on behalf of the community and people. Privatized hospitals have a long history disappointment in Australia. They promise their patients to deliver cheaper and better services but fail to do so. They ask for money from the Government bodies as they cannot cope up with the expenses. Hence, the Governmental bodies h ave to pay the entire amount or take back the control. They may also have to pay huge compensation for underestimating the demands (Tiemann and Schreygg 2012). Ideological Viewpoints The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association (NSWNMA) privatized their hospitals in five major regions, namely, Maitland, Goulburn, Bowral, Shellharbour and Wyong. This will directly impact the staffs, as they may not be given the positions they had before and moreover, they will have minimal alternatives in the new privatized hospitals. Patients also suffer the risk in reduction of their care and services (Krachler and Greer 2015). The General Secretary of the Hospital, Brett Holmes, stated that the people had the right to be informed about this drastic change. They should be informed regarding the governments decision of selling the public hospitals by stepping on partnerships with the private hospitals. According to him, this decision of the government is the worst one. He is not happy with the decision of privatization of public hospitals and considered it as sad news. He further confirms that more public hospitals are going to get privatized all across the state. He shared his concern regarding the patients care and services. Moreover, their safety is much dependent on budget, profitability and availability of staff members (Collyer, Harley and Short 2015). Staff members and local nurses are doomed as their future working conditions are dark. They are offered with only two years of employment guarantee and moreover, they have minimal opportunities of negotiating with the private operators. They were not even warned or informed about this drastic measure of privatization, beforehand. Their future prospects were discussed with even consulting them and blatantly ignoring their rights (Bundey 2014). The private operators have also mentioned that the permanent staffs of the organization will be provided with a stable position, but they didnt give guarantee about the temporary ones. Temporary workers had limited rights regarding this upsetting situation. Several hard hitting campaigns were being carried out by the workers, on behalf of the community, regarding the privatization. The organization will also continue to protest on their members behalf, opposing privatizations as well as to educate the society regarding the future and threats of the Public health care and services (Krachler and Greer 2015). Scientific Rigor The announcement of the NSW Coalition Government about the privatization of five key regional hospitals- Goulburn, Wyong, Maitland, Bowral and Shellharbour has left the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association in awe. Privatization of the hospitals will have a large impact on the public- private partnerships. The staff will be directly affected by this organizational change whose career will be at stake because there is no assurance of their job positions in the new hospital (Krachler and Greer 2015). Even if they are not assured any job guarantee, they will be left with limited options for working in the alternative areas. Since, the public hospitals in the mentioned areas left no loophole in taking care of the patients; therefore, there is a high scope that the patient care might be neglected in the new hospitals. With the privatization of the hospitals, there will be strict rules and regulations which will go against the common public and the employees of the hospitals. As it is given in the media release that the Government has an agenda to keep on privatizing more hospitals throughout the state, it can be stated that there lies accountability when private operators will handle government finance and will be responsible for offering profit on the investment (McIlroy 2017). The problem lies in privation because they cannot assure of the nurse-to-patient ratios as the patient safety is depended on the budget and profit margin. With the introduction of strict norms and policies, the non- eligible staff will not be given any position, thus the future of the nurses and midwives are dubious. Evidence- identified Approach In the given scenario of privatization of hospitals, the agenda setting approach of the mass media can be considered as the media signifies the public agenda in what the people think about a particular situation (McIlroy 2016). The press release on the privatization of the five important hospitals will make the readers think in a definite way and start judging the situation from a different angle. Reading about the news will lead the readers to put importance on the issue based on the given information. The response of the citizen and the officials about the issue has let the media set the agenda of the campaign (McCombs Shaw and Weaver 2014). The dependency theory will also be an effective approach based on the given evidence. As per the theory, there is an internal connection between the media, audience and the society at large. Most of the audience these days uses media to get the required information which make them dependent. The dependence relationship that is created between the media and the audience is beneficial for attaining the target goals by using the media power. The level of dependence of the audience is directly proportional to the individual, social stability and active audience. In the given situation, the media attracted the common people of the area by delivering the press release which will satisfy their needs of getting information about the surrounding (Jung 2017). This led the audience to develop an opinion and understanding based on the information given in the media release. Conclusion Therefore it can be analyzed from the assignment that the initiative towards privatization will affect the budgets as well as the working condition of many staffs at the cost of providing the best services for the patients. It is debated that there will be negative effect of privatization because it does not necessarily improve the efficiency. There is a risk that the private sector managers are reluctant about the strategies of profit- making and providing essential services unaffordable or unavailable for the majority of population. The history of failure of privatization of hospitals has led the members of NSWNMA to go for a protest campaign for the benefit of the common people. They will continue their protest against the privatization of hospitals to educate the community about its relevant threats to public health in future. References Barlow, J., Roehrich, J. and Wright, S., 2013. Europe sees mixed results from public-private partnerships for building and managing health care facilities and services.Health Affairs,32(1), pp.146-154. Blackman, I.R., Henderson, J.A., Willis, E.M. and Toffoli, L.P., 2015.After hours nurse staffing, work intensity and quality of care-missed care study: New South Wales public and private sectors. Final report to the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives' Association. Flinders University. Bundey, F., 2014. Putting the co-payment in context: Australia's increasingly financialised system of healthcare.The Journal of Australian Political Economy, (73), p.58. Collyer, F., Harley, K. and Short, S., 2015. Money and markets in Australia's healthcare system. Sydney University Press. Cox, E. and Procter, K., 2016. Privatisation'undermines trust in governments'.Lamp, The,73(9), p.20. Fox, K.J. ed., 2013.Efficiency in the public sector(Vol. 1). Springer Science Business Media. Jung, J.Y., 2017. Media Dependency Theory.The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects. Krachler, N. and Greer, I., 2015. When does marketisation lead to privatisation? Profit-making in English health services after the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.Social Science Medicine,124, pp.215-223. Krachler, N. and Greer, I., 2015. When does marketisation lead to privatisation? Profit-making in English health services after the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.Social Science Medicine,124, pp.215-223. McCombs, M.E., Shaw, D.L. and Weaver, D.H., 2014. New directions in agenda-setting theory and research.Mass communication and society,17(6), pp.781-802. McIlroy, J., 2016. Unions rally to stop hospital privatisation.Green Left Weekly, (1112), p.4. McIlroy, J., 2017. Bowral and wyong hospitals remain in public hands.Green Left Weekly, (1145), p.8. Roehrich, J.K., Lewis, M.A. and George, G., 2014. Are publicprivate partnerships a healthy option? A systematic literature review.Social Science Medicine,113, pp.110-119. Tang, C., Zhang, Y., Chen, L. and Lin, Y., 2013. The growth of private hospitals and their health workforce in China: a comparison with public hospitals.Health policy and planning,29(1), pp.30-41. Tiemann, O. and Schreygg, J., 2012. Changes in hospital efficiency after privatization.Health care management science,15(4), pp.310-326. Tiemann, O. and Schreygg, J., 2012. Changes in hospital efficiency after privatization.Health care management science,15(4), pp.310-326.