‘Outrageous’: Women’s health services to be cut, incoming Catholic owner of NSW hospital confirms

Services including IVF, voluntary assisted dying, elective terminations of pregnancy, gender reassignment surgeries and some contraceptive procedures will be cut at hospitals across the country, Calvary Health Care has confirmed.

The Catholic health organisation is set to more than double its hospital portfolio when it takes over 16 hospitals across Australia by the end of the month, following the financial collapse of Healthscope.

Its Catholic code of ethical standards will be enforced across all its new hospitals, however, some of the new acquisitions will not be impacted by reproductive or VAD rules, as they largely specialise in mental health.

At Newcastle Private, the changes will come into effect on December 1, after which any doctor who performs a banned procedure will face “disciplinary action,” obstetricians were told during a Wednesday evening meeting with Calvary Health Care leaders.

Newcastle Private obstetrician Dr Denise Nesbitt, who attended the meeting, said she would remain on staff at the hospital to “keep looking after our women”.

“They can have whatever beliefs they want to live by as Catholics,” Nesbitt said. “But to remove choice from women and patients, to just walk into an established hospital [and] dictate medical decisions is outrageous in 2026.”

Doctors previously raised concerns that the takeover could contribute to a service desert in the region, with Newcastle the only private maternity hospital between Sydney and the Queensland border and the city a major centre for cancer treatment and palliative care.

Calvary Health Care released a statement on Thursday confirming the cuts.

“Where Calvary is unable to offer a particular service, admitted patients will continue to receive all other care and support,” the statement read. “The acquisitions will provide greater stability for the hospitals, their employees and the communities they serve.”

Dr Peter Harrigan, a consultant anaesthetist who has worked at Newcastle Private for two decades, said the statement was “unsatisfactory”.

“This is a significant downgrading of healthcare in the area,” he said. “People in the hospital will receive suboptimal treatment because of the denial of that service and … will need to be moved around, which increases their suffering.”

The Minns Labor government does not currently plan to intervene in the controversial licence transfer between Healthscope and Calvary, despite frustration from local members who took to social media on Monday in protest.

“Newcastle Private Hospital has provided vital gynaecological, fertility, and obstetric care to the Hunter patients for decades,” Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp said in a letter to the state’s health minister, posted on Facebook.

Member for Wallsend Sonia Hornery posted that it was “vital that NSW Health pulls any levers that can be pulled to ensure the continued provision of these health services”.

The license transfer is currently under review with NSW Health following community feedback, while the national takeover is also under consideration with the ACCC.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park told a press conference on Tuesday that the government does not control clinical services provided by private hospitals, but would work with clinicians across the community to ensure people in the Hunter region still have access.

“We don’t determine when a private hospital provider is going to sell, and we don’t determine who is the buyer,” Park said.

“[We] provide a licence around a fit and proper person, that is, a fit and proper organisation and a management team that will lead a hospital. That’s our licensing requirement.”

Park said the NSW Health Secretary was yet to determine whether Calvary met these criteria, but said he did not want to see the whole hospital lost to the community.

“There’s not a huge number of buyers for private hospitals at the moment, so we’ve also got to balance to make sure that we can continue to provide those services.”

Ramsay Health Care, which provides reproductive and end-of-life care in the Hunter, said on Tuesday it was exploring further service offerings in the region, including IVF.

Independent member for Lake Macquarie Greg Piper said government assurances that services remained available within the public sector were “not good enough”.

“I’m not convinced the public sector has capacity,” he said. “[Calvary] is taking over a large part of the private health network and that is definitely going to have impacts on people wanting to access otherwise unremarkable … services.”

Calvary’s chief executive Damien Bruce said the organisation recognised the changes would have implications for clinicians and patients.

“We are having active discussions with local clinicians to understand those impacts and are committed to working with relevant healthcare providers to explore appropriate pathways for patients,” Bruce said in a statement.

He said Calvary had provided high-quality, compassionate healthcare for people from all backgrounds, beliefs and circumstances for 140 years. “We will bring that same commitment to Newcastle Private and Hunter Valley Private hospitals,” he said.

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