Catholic Health Australia Limited and Ors

On 25 July 2024, Catholic Health Australia applied for revocation of authorisation A91400 (granted to St Vincent’s Health Australia Limited) and substitution of new authorisation AA1000677 on behalf of a group of health, community and aged care service providers.

Catholic Health Australia sought authorisation for the following:

• A group of Catholic hospital operators, known as the Revenue Negotiation Network (RNN) (and their related bodies corporate) to:
  • collectively bargain hospital and healthcare related funding arrangements with funding organisations and share data between RNN members
  • agree to collectively boycott certain private health insurers while collective negotiations are underway, where the private health insurers have agreed to participate in joint negotiation. This proposed boycott is to apply to the 5 largest private health insurers in Australia by national market share, which is currently Medibank, Bupa, NIB, HCF and HBF.
• A group of Catholic healthcare facilities known as the Joint Purchasing Network (JPN) (and their related bodies corporate) to:
  • collectively bargain with suppliers of goods or services, including sharing of data among JPN members
  • agree to collectively boycott certain suppliers during collective negotiations, where a supplier has agreed to participate in joint negotiation (collective boycott). This proposed boycott is to apply to suppliers with an annual Australian turnover of more than $5 million or an annual global turnover of more than $10 million.
• A group of Catholic health, aged care and community care service providers known as the Catholic Negotiating Alliance (CNA) (and their related bodies corporate) to exchange data, including revenue, activities, costs and efficiency data for benchmarking purposes.

Catholic Health Australia sought authorisation for 10 years.

On 19 December 2024, the ACCC issued a draft determination proposing to grant authorisation for 10 years for the collective bargaining, data sharing and JPN boycott of large suppliers. The proposed authorised conduct was modified from the description of the conduct sought by Catholic Health Australia (the proposed authorised conduct is described at paragraph 5.7 of the determination). The ACCC proposed not to grant authorisation for the RNN boycott of large private health insurers.

On 27 February 2025, the ACCC issued a final determination granting authorisation until 21 March 2035 for the collective bargaining, data sharing and JPN boycott of large suppliers. The ACCC did not authorise the RNN boycott of large private health insurers.