“Getting into Hospitals in a Big Way”: The Corporate Transformation of Hospital Care in Australia

Abstract

In many countries the provision of hospital services has changed from a cottage industry with many small operators to an industry in which large corporate chains are now starting to predominate. Transnational corporations have increasingly invested in the provision of hospital services when traditional areas of investment have become no longer attractive. Although corporate involvement in the provision of hospital services has become an issue of considerable significance in recent years, geographers have paid little attention to such trends. Within Australia, changes in access to capital and shifts in investment, the role of the state regulatory environment, and, to a lesser extent, the emergence of corporate managerialism are the key factors underpinning corporate transformation. A case study of Mayne Health Ltd, formerly the largest corporate provider of hospital care, is used to illustrate such trends. The corporate transformation has been geographically uneven at both the state and local levels and reflects local variation especially in state regulatory environments and the extent to which corporate providers have entered into new public–private partnerships at the local level. We suggest that the implications of such trends are far from clear and that more research is needed on this fundamental restructuring of hospital services.