ELECTIVE SURGERY

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:22): Can the Minister for Health inform the house whether there are more people going onto or coming off elective surgery waiting lists?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:22): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank the member for—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Already she has started interjecting. I have not even said thank you yet. I've started thanking you, Mr Speaker, and I get an interjection before I have finished thanking you. I do thank you, Mr Speaker, for the call, and I thank the member for Florey for asking this important question.

The Hon. R.B. Such interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I wouldn't know about that, Bob. On Wednesday 6 May this year, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition declared in a media release on elective surgery that 'more people are going onto the list than are coming off'. That is what she said: 'More people are going onto the list than are coming off.' The Leader of the Opposition subsequently published the same release on his own website; so he believed the deputy leader, which was a mistake, as we know. The deputy leader and Leader of the Opposition, let me tell the house, are wrong; they are both wrong.

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Again?

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Again. They were either unwilling or unable to correctly interpret statistical information that is published on the Department of Health website. If the member for Bragg had correctly interpreted the information published on elective surgery rates in South Australia, she would have seen that, as of February this year, 3,781 patients were added to the waiting list and 4,048 were removed. Therefore—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL:The Advertiser believed her. Isn't that great? The Advertiser believed the deputy leader. Well, let the burden of that belief fall where it may. The facts are: you were wrong, and if they reported that incorrect statement they were wrong as well. On my calculations, that means that 267 more people came off the list than went on the list in that period. There is also a graph on the website which clearly shows that these were getting shorter not longer, unlike noses.

In fact, over the past year, for every 100 patients who left the waiting list only 98 were added. If the deputy leader had made these claims about a year ago she would have been correct, because we were putting on about 107 for 100 who came off, but, because we have done more elective surgery we have turned that around. It cannot be any more simple. More people are coming off than are going on the list.

The member for Bragg would surely know that there will always be people who leave lists for reasons other than having surgery. There is a range of reasons that people leave lists. One of the reasons is that they might be on more than one list at the time they get the surgery from one person, so then they are taken off the list somewhere else. Some people, in the end, recover without having to have surgery. Others decide that they may not want to have surgery; some may leave the state; some may go onto private cover; and a whole range of other reasons.

This has always been the case. There have always been reasons why people have left the list other than for surgery. So we have to compare like with like and, if we compare like with like, more people are coming off than are going on. I am also informed that, in the past, some patients, as I have said, were on more than one waiting list.

We are working collaboratively with the commonwealth government to provide South Australians with the elective surgery that they need when they need it. We are performing many more cases of elective surgery than at any time in our state's history and, consequently, we are slashing elective surgery waiting times. In fact, as at 31 March this year, there were 429 overdue patients compared to 1,829 a year ago. That is a 77 per cent reduction over the course of that year. I can now inform the house that 98.8 per cent of all patients are seen within 12 months. About a year ago, that was about 96 per cent, so we are getting close to 100 per cent.

In the 2007-08 financial year, the hardworking doctors and nurses of our major metropolitan hospitals performed a record 39,962 operations. That was 4,376 (or 12 per cent) more than during the last year of the former Liberal government. This year, we are on track to smash the record set last year. As at 31 March this year, we were 1,325 procedures ahead of where we were at the same time in 2008. That is about 5 per cent more surgery performed.

In the past five weeks, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has wrongly claimed that, first, a renal patient had missed out on a kidney transplant when an operation had, in fact, been successfully completed; secondly, that elective surgery at Mount Gambier Hospital could be cut when, in fact, it is being increased; and now she has claimed that elective surgery lists are lengthening when they are, in fact, shortening. That is three major errors in fact in just one month.

We should add to this list that, on Tuesday, the member for Bragg repeated the claim that a senior public servant had instructed Dr Katsaros that he would not have a public meeting at the RAH, when in fact the only instruction Dr Katsaros received was the standard occupational health and safety obligations as the hirer of the lecture theatre. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has a duty of care to patients and staff in our hospitals to get her facts right and to interpret—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Mr Speaker, the deputy leader says to me to tell the truth. I am telling the truth in here about her continual fabrications and misleading of the public about the true facts that are occurring in the health system.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: There's a failure of honesty.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: There is a failure of honesty, as the Minister for Infrastructure said. Considering how badly burned the Leader of the Opposition was last week over the use of the dodgy documents, you would think that he and his team would have learned to check their facts first but, clearly, they haven't.