Private care means an experienced obstetrician will perform your antenatal care and delivery, normal or otherwise, and look after any antenatal, birth or postnatal issues that are obstetrics-related. Public care has many models e.g. midwifery-led care, doctors’ clinics, etc. The delivery, if normal, will be performed by a midwife but if complicated, a doctor will become involved with senior consultant supervision, as the public hospital system is a teaching model where junior doctors train to become obstetrics and gynaecology consultants over many years.
I work and am available to my patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There may be occasions where I may not be able to be present for delivery due to conferences to keep up-to-date or occasionally personal leave or illness. There will always be an experienced obstetrician on-call to cover. An on-call group roster covers weekends when I may rarely be unavailable.
Private health insurance will cover all in-hospital stays and procedures. The fees charged in rooms are in part covered by Medicare. These fees cover the day-to-day costs of staff employment, rooms rental, equipment and part of the medical indemnity insurances.