Healthscope Pay Rates 2026: Nurses, Support & Hospital Staff Pay

Healthscope is one of Australia's largest private hospital operators, employing around 19,000 people. Two awards set the pay floor:

• Nurses Award 2020 (MA000034) — registered nurses, enrolled nurses and nursing assistants. Private hospital nursing staff sit on the award's standard scale (the higher aged-care rates from the work value case apply only to aged-care employees).
• Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 (MA000027) — allied health professionals plus the support side of every hospital: cleaners, orderlies, catering, stores, ward clerks and administration.

In practice most Healthscope staff are on state-based enterprise agreements that pay above these floors — see the agreements section below. The award still matters as the benchmark every agreement must beat, and as the floor if you fall between agreements.

Healthscope's operating companies were placed into receivership in May 2025, and the receivers ran a sale process for the hospital network. Through all of it the hospitals kept operating and wages kept being paid — and legally, nothing about a receivership or a change of owner reduces what staff are owed. Awards, enterprise agreements and accrued entitlements (leave, redundancy scales, pay points) bind whoever operates the business. Where a business transfers to a new operator, the Fair Work Act's transfer-of-business rules carry registered agreements across with it.

The clearest evidence that normal industrial life continued: bargaining didn't stop. The Victorian nurses and midwives agreement below was approved by the Fair Work Commission in April 2026 — a year into receivership. If an employer entity were ever wound up and jobs lost, the federal Fair Entitlements Guarantee covers unpaid wages, leave and capped redundancy — but that is a liquidation safety net, not the current position. The practical takeaway: keep your payslips, and check them against your agreement exactly as you would in any other year.

For non-nursing hospital staff, the Health Professionals and Support Services Award adult minimums from 1 July 2026 are:

Source: Fair Work Commission modern awards pay database, rates operative from 1 July 2026. Weekend, shift and public-holiday penalties apply on top of these for the 24/7 parts of a hospital — price a specific roster with our penalty rates calculator.

Nursing pay at Healthscope runs off the Nurses Award ladder — nursing assistant, enrolled nurse and registered nurse classifications, each stepping through pay points with years of service — with the state enterprise agreements setting the actual rates above it. Current award figures by classification and pay point are on our Nurses Award pay rates page.

The comparison worth making is with the other big private operator: our Ramsay Health Care pay rates 2026 page carries the verified Nurses Award tables and the Ramsay state agreements — the same award floor applies at both employers, so any difference in your pay comes from the enterprise agreement covering your hospital.

Healthscope bargains state by state and stream by stream. Current agreements in our corpus include:

• Healthscope – Victoria – Nurses' and Midwives' Agreement 2025 — approved April 2026, nominal expiry 31 March 2028.
• Healthscope NSW Nurses and Midwives Enterprise Agreement 2024 — approved November 2025, nominal expiry 30 June 2028.
• Healthscope – Tasmania – Nurses and Midwives – Enterprise Agreement 2025 — nominal expiry 31 December 2027.
• Healthscope – Queensland – Allied Health Employees – Enterprise Agreement 2025–2027 — nominal expiry 31 December 2027.
• Healthscope Darwin Private Hospital Nurses and Midwives Enterprise Agreement 2024 — nominal expiry 30 June 2029.

These set rates above the award with their own classification structures and allowances — we don't reproduce agreement dollar figures because the agreement covering your state and stream is the document to read. Find your hospital's agreement, then your classification, then your pay point.

The recurring issues in private hospital pay:

• Frozen pay points — increments that should step annually but don't, especially after payroll migrations or ownership changes.
• Stream misclassification — admin and ward-support staff left at Level 1-2 while doing Level 3 work.
• Unpaid handover — clinical and shift handover before and after rostered hours is work time.
• Weekend and night loadings dropped when rosters change or systems are replaced.

Check your rate against your agreement (or the award tables above) with our payslip checker, quantify any shortfall with the back-pay calculator, and raise it in writing with payroll. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost — up to six years back. The ANMF and HSU cover this sector.