IVF, abortion and more set to cease at Newcastle private hospitals

Calvary Health Care will cease IVF, elective abortions, voluntary assisted dying, and gender reassignment procedures if it acquires two Newcastle-based private hospitals later this month.

The Catholic provider is planning to take over 14 hospitals across the country, including Newcastle and Hunter Valley Private hospitals, after Healthscope collapsed earlier this year.

The hospital sales are still subject to regulatory approvals, including the transfer of a state government-issued hospital licence and a determination from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Calvary follows a Catholic code of ethics, which prohibits providers from offering a range of reproductive and community health services on religious grounds. 

For the past week, concerns have been spreading about what the changes mean for women's and community health.

Vice-president of the Hunter Workers Women's Committee Rachel Hughes said religion should have no place in health care.

"What happens to people's bodies should be a choice between them and their medical practitioner," she said.

"It should have nothing to do with the operator of the hospital; it should have nothing to do with religion."

Ms Hughes said she was most worried about the impact the changes would have on women and those trying for a family. 

"[The hospital] is one of very few places outside of Sydney within New South Wales offering IVF procedures," she said.

"There's a broader impact on families, on marriages, on children … this is not fair."

Peter Harrigan has worked as an anaesthetist at Newcastle Private Hospital for 20 years.

Dr Harrigan said the public system would struggle to keep up with excess demand.

"They're removing a set of services which are very well established with really good clinicians and really good outcomes because of their particular set of beliefs," he said.

"The public hospitals are so stressed and so burdened that the wards are always busy.

"This is pretty upsetting."

Health Minister Ryan Park said he was aware of the community's concerns, but the state government did not have the power to intervene in private sales. 

"We don't decide what services a private hospital can and can't and won't be delivering," he told ABC Newcastle Breakfast. 

"What we're looking at there is whether a particular organisation is fit and proper to hold a health licence," Minister Park said.

"We're looking at any gaps and how those gaps might be resolved."

The Code of Ethical Standards for Catholic Health and Aged Care states that procedures which assist the "marital act to achieve its purpose" are morally permissible, but discourages in-vitro fertilisation, labelling it "contrary to respect for human life in its origins".

"Catholic healthcare facilities should not engage in procedures that intentionally and in themselves damage or destroy an embryo," the code reads. 

The code of ethics also states Catholic facilities should not provide or refer for abortions, labelling the practice "morally wrong".

Hunter IVF offers services adjacent to Newcastle Private and has traditionally completed egg collections in the hospital's operating theatres. 

In a statement, clinical director Andrew Hedges said the organisation is having conversations with a number of other private hospitals about arrangements for hospital-based procedures. 

"Calvary Health Care does not have access to our laboratory, and its decisions about hospital services do not affect our laboratory operations or the safe storage of patients' eggs," the statement read.

Calvary already runs the Calvary Mater Hospital in Newcastle, one of the largest cancer hospitals in the state outside Sydney.  

In a statement, Calvary said the acquisitions would provide "greater stability" for the hospitals, their employees and the community.