Victoria’s biggest palliative care provider will ban its hospitals, health centres and clinicians from performing assisted suicides if they are legalised by the Andrews government. St Vincent’s Health Australia chief executive Toby Hall said the Andrews government’s proposed “conservative” euthanasia model was flawed and vulnerable patients would be put at risk by the proposed legislative changes, which he described as a “cheap economic way out”. He accused the government of taking the cheaper option to “give someone a drug and kill them” rather than providing sufficient palliative care for the majority of Victoria’s terminally ill. St Vincent’s is Australia’s biggest Catholic non-for-profit healthcare provider, owning four hospitals in Melbourne, including the publicly funded St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, which has 880 beds, employs 5000 staff and last year treated 54,000 inpatients. It runs a dedicated palliative care facility in the east Melbourne suburb of Kew and jointly operates a palliative care centre at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, which plays a major role in research and education in Victoria. “We will never provide assisted suicide in our hospitals; our clinicians will not provide it and will not be able to provide it and we will not allow it in our aged-care facilities either,” Mr Hall said.
