HEALTH BUDGET

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (14:59): My question is to the Treasurer. Is the transfer of ward patients into treatment rooms at Flinders Medical Centre a consequence of the government's policy of increasing the health budget by around 2 per cent per annum when the government has previously claimed health costs are increasing at 9 per cent per annum?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:00): The answer to that is clearly no. The health budget has been growing over recent years and one of the goals we have had as a government is to reduce the demand on our hospitals and we have been successful, as I indicated to the house a little while ago. The growth in demand for hospital services in the last 12 months was down below 2 per cent for Adelaide hospitals. That is a real reduction on the average of about 4 or 5 per cent that we have seen over previous years.

The government has done that by having greater capacity outside the hospitals and putting plans in place to help people who have chronic disease so that they do not come to hospital as frequently. We have identified a large number of people, usually elderly, who are frail, who have multiple chronic diseases and who are in and out of hospitals. If you put care in their homes then you could stop them going into hospital. We have done a whole range of things and, as a result of investment in out-of-hospital care over the last five years by Treasury through the health system, we have been able to reduce the growth in demand.

That is not to say that from time to time there will be spikes. That would happen in any system depending on the circumstances—weather is one of the major factors that drives this. The overall trend is very positive. It is still growing but the rate of growth in demand for our hospital services is reducing and that is what our overall goal is, and the money that is given to us by Treasury reflects that.