PRIVATE patients have jumped queues for treatment at NSW public hospitals, with their willingness to pay improving their chances of shorter waiting times and of having their cases classed as more urgent.
A new University of Technology, Sydney study has found private patients were a third more likely than public patients to be assigned to the two most-urgent elective surgery categories, which require treatment within seven or 30 days.
Once assigned to a category, they also spent less time in the queues for surgery.
Private patients' wait for treatment was 9 per cent shorter than public patients' in the most urgent seven-day clinical category, 15 per cent less in the 30-day category, and 28 per cent less in the 90-day category.
Those assigned to the least-urgent category, which aims for treatment within 12 months, spent about half the time in the queue as public patients.
Study co-author Elizabeth Savage, from UTS's Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation, attributed the differences to the financial incentives hospital doctors received to prioritise private patients.
"Doctors are very good at responding to payment incentives," Professor Savage said. "Hospitals are probably less efficient at it."
The preferential treatment offered to private patients ceased on admission, with no significant differences recorded in their number of procedures, readmission or death rates compared with public patients.
But Professor Savage said it was inequitable for private and public patients who were otherwise comparable in age, gender and diagnosis to face different waiting times. The study, jointly conducted with Hebrew University of Jerusalem academic Amir Shmueli, drew on a database of all non-emergency admissions discharged from NSW public hospitals during 2004-05.
A spokesman for NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca said there had been dramatic reductions in people waiting for both urgent and non-urgent elective surgery since 2004-05.
"Between 2004-05 and 2007-08, we invested an extra $228.5million to increase elective surgery," he said. "In this year's budget, an additional $18.5million has been invested in elective surgery."
Professor Savage said increased resourcing could make a difference, but cast doubt on the Government's reporting regime for waiting lists.
"There is evidence that after 2005, the data might be a bit less reliable because they're gaming the system," she said.
However, Mr Della Bosca's spokesman said the categorisation of elective patients was a clinical decision made by the referring doctor.
In 2006 guidelines, "it is clearly stated that the allocation of the clinical priority category for patients is based on clinical need, regardless of health insurance status", he said.
