States and territories receive hospital funding negotiation pause to ‘catch up’ on NDIS reform

State and territory hospital funding negotiations are on pause according to the federal health minister in an effort to focus on the overhaul of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), despite public hospitals being under pressure.

All state and territory health ministers sent an open letter to Mark Butler ahead of a roundtable that was held in Adelaide on Friday and made several demands of the federal government in their open letter, including more funding for public hospitals, as the current funding arrangement is due to run out in a year. 

However, Mr Butler said he had received direction from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to pause hospital funding negotiations and allow disability negotiations to “catch up”. 

“I’m keen to restart that process as soon as we possibly can, there’s been a really good level of consensus amongst health ministers about what the next possible funding deal should look like. But obviously, we’ve got to wait until disability ministers and others are able to progress their work,” he said.

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