ELECTIVE SURGERY

Mr KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (15:22): My question is to the Minister for Health. What has been the progress of the joint plan with the commonwealth government to reduce the number of long-wait elective surgery patients?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:22): I thank the member for West Torrens and acknowledge his interest in health matters. I know many of his constituents—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: He is a very healthy young man, I can assure you. Many of his constituents will, in fact, benefit from this measure.

I am pleased to say that last Friday the South Australian government signed a formal agreement with the commonwealth to receive funding as part of the Elective Surgery Waiting List Reduction Plan, and the signing of the agreement means that, once the commonwealth countersigns it (which we expect will happen soon), it will provide the first $8.5 million of the $13.6 million allocated to South Australia under this plan. This will immediately clear the way for us to make a start on the 2,262 extra procedures, with the ambitious aim of eliminating our state's long-wait elective surgery list. These additional procedures must be undertaken before the end of the year, and come on top of our own elective surgery strategy which will already result in 500 extra procedures this year.

There is no doubt that we have to work hard to undertake the additional procedures on top of the 38,000 procedures that we were already planning to perform this year. However, by working with hospitals and surgeons, the government believes that the vast majority of the additional procedures funded by the commonwealth government will be performed in public hospitals. This is testimony to the hard work and skill of our public hospital doctors and nurses. There is also the potential for the state to use the private sector for a small number of these additional procedures. Some people have questioned whether the private sector would have any additional capacity to undertake additional procedures. I can inform the house today that seven private hospitals have placed bids with the government to perform public elective surgery in their hospitals. The response the government has received to its invitation to submit to tender clearly demonstrates that the capacity exists.

Of course, we would prefer to undertake as many operations as we can in our own hospitals and we will continue to work with the hospitals and surgeons to ensure that this is possible. Our state has a strong health system. The government has been consistently increasing the number of elective surgery operations, and will fund in excess of 150,000 operations over four years. The extra commonwealth funding is gratefully received and is another important step in reducing elective surgery waiting time.