Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has slammed the coalition's suggestion there should be a crackdown on the number of private health fund holders using public hospitals.

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton said 350,000 private patients were seen in public hospitals each year and staff were trying to extend their lucrative stays.

"At the moment we have public hospitals who employ staff to ... identify private patients who are in public hospitals to offer them cash bonuses to stay in the hospital, to pay their gap fees to stay in public hospitals," he told Network Ten on Sunday.

"If you've got public servants who are being employed at a state level to try and attract people with private health insurance into the public system, we need to address that."

Less than an hour later, Ms Roxon branded Mr Dutton's suggestion "absolutely ridiculous".

She said there were 750 public hospitals in Australia, many with emergency departments, whereas only 24 private hospitals had the same capability.

Of private hospitals with emergency departments in NSW, for example, Ms Roxon said they were all in Sydney.

"It's a ridiculous suggestion because .... what does (Mr Dutton) expect privately insured people to do if they have an emergency, if they need urgent attention," she told the Nine Network.

"Does he expect them all to travel to Sydney to get that attention because he doesn't think they should go to public hospitals?"

Mr Dutton said that while all Australians were entitled to access public hospitals, cutting down on the number of private patients in them would help manage bed shortages.

"Australians have the right to access a public hospital and many do, particularly in trauma cases ... and that will always be the case," he said.

"But the reality is that where we can try and address the bed blockages in our public hospitals, we should do that."

Mr Dutton also accused the federal government of walking away from its plan to take over the public hospital system if it was not up to scratch this year.

But Ms Roxon said Labor's preference had always been for the service to remain in state and territory hands and any decision on the future financial control of public hospitals would be informed by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's recommendations, due next month.

"I think there are some positive signs but that doesn't mean everything is fixed, I agree with that," Ms Roxon said.

"We will look at the Health Reform Commission's recommendations when they come to us at the end of June and we'll make an assessment about the next steps that need to be taken."