Major adjustments coming to NSW hospitals after dying of two-year-old Joe Massa | USAEMALL.com

The Minns government has announced landmark legislation to ban future private partnerships from being imposed on acute hospitals across the state.

On Thursday, Premier Chris Minns announced sweeping new legislation for acute hospitals, banning all future public private partnerships from being imposed and preventing any future governments from entering into such partnerships that may limit control over hospital services, such as emergency, surgical and impatient assistance.

“Today we are announcing that under ‘Joe’s Law’, NSW will ban all future public private partnerships being imposed on the state’s acute hospitals,” Mr Minns said.

“As a Labor government, we believe critical public services like acute hospitals should remain in public hands, safeguarded from privatisation.”

The move comes following the launch of a parliamentary inquiry into the death of two-year-old Joe Massa after he received care at the Northern Beaches Hospital.

The two-year-old was taken to the Sydney hospital on September 12 after he began vomiting.

Parents Elouise and Danny Massa say they were forced to wait for two hours to get a bed and Joe was wrongly triaged into a lower priority despite having a high heart rate and severe loss of fluid.

He was transferred to Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick, where he suffered cardiac arrest about three hours after arriving at the emergency department.

He died as a result of brain damage.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park wrote to NSW parliament public accounts committee chair Jason Yat-Sen Li on Friday requesting an inquiry into the safety and quality of health services provided by Northern Beaches Hospital.

The sweeping new legislation forms part of the review into the Northern Beaches Hospital and will be introduced into the NSW Legislative Assembly, amending the Health Services Act 1997.

The scope of the inquiry will stretch back to October 2018 when the hospital began as a privately operated facility.

It will consider incidents at the hospital – including those the subject of serious adverse event reviews – and how the facility responded, along with the extent to which it implemented any changes prompted by those incidents.

Mr Park welcomed the ban on any future government seeking a “privatisation agenda”.

“From the very beginning, we’ve adamantly opposed these sorts of arrangements – and we will continue to oppose them, now and into the future,” Mr Park said.

“What we are doing today is to deliver further protection of our hospitals – honouring the memory and legacy of toddler Joe Massa.

“Joe’s Law will mean that public hospitals which provide services such as emergency, surgical and inpatient services will be protected under this government and from any future government that wishes to enter into such partnerships with private providers.”