Owned by Canadian private equity firm Brookfield, which purchased the company for $5.7 billion in 2019, Healthscope is Australia’s second-largest private hospital group, owns or operates 39 hospitals across the country and employs about 19,000 workers.

However, it is currently saddled with some $1.6 billion in debt.

Healthscope called in McGrathNicol as receivers today, but said there won’t be an impact on its staff and patients after creditor Commonwealth Bank provided a $100 million funding package.

“We want to make it clear that the subsidiaries that own and operate Healthscope’s network of hospitals are not affected by our appointment to the shareholding companies,” receiver Keith Crawford said in a statement.

“Our immediate focus is to engage constructively with all key stakeholders to ensure uninterrupted operation of Healthscope hospitals and continuity of best practice standards of patient care.”

McGrathNicol said it plans to sell all 37 hospitals Healthscope owns without any closures or redundancies, and Healthscope chief executive Tino La Spina revealed it has already received 10 offers to buy the entire company.

“We’re… confident that there is interest in taking the Healthscope business as a whole,” he said.

“We have 10 non-binding indicative offers. Some are for the whole and others potentially could include the whole under certain circumstances.”

Health Minister Mark Butler today ruled out providing a taxpayer-funded bailout to Brookfield, and said working with state governments to bring any of its hospitals into public hands “is not on our agenda”.

“The owners of this company, which you will remember is an overseas private equity firm, will not receive a taxpayer bailout to deal with this,” he said.

“They need to go through a proper sale process.”

Butler said he would hold Healthscope and its receivers to their commitment to keep hospitals running normally during the sale process.

La Spina said there were three issues behind Healthscope’s collapse.

“One is there’s too much secured debt, and that’s being addressed,” he said.

“The other is the rents that the company are paying are out of the market, too high. That will get addressed as part of this process.

“The third, as widely spoken about, is the industry structure with private health insurers basically having squirrelled away billions and not putting it back to the private sector.

“That is a fight for another day. Here we’re talking about a process to address the first two.”

Beyond its financial woes, Healthscope has faced heavy scrutiny in recent months following the death of two-year-old Joe Massa at its private-public Northern Beaches Hospital.

The toddler’s death sparked a parliamentary inquiry and a police investigation and led the NSW government to ban public-private hospital partnerships.

In a statement, Joe’s mother Elouise Massa said the receivership provided a chance to ensure Northern Beaches Hospital becomes publicly owned.

“We have witnessed first-hand the tragedy that unfolded when Healthscope and Brookfield prioritised profit over patient care — resulting in the avoidable death of our beloved Joe after we took him to Northern Beaches Hospital, where he should have recovered, but did not,” she said.

“This moment presents the NSW government with a renewed opportunity to put Northern Beaches Hospital into public hands.”

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the government’s plan to take over the hospital was a complicated matter.

“We haven’t landed the way forward yet,” he said this morning, before Healthscope’s receivership was officially announced.

“We are in constant negotiation, multiple times a week, the treasurer and I are getting briefed.

“This is very, very complex, and very challenging.”