MODBURY HOSPITAL

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:38): Again, to the Minister for Health: is it correct that the cost of providing ambulance transfer of children from Modbury Hospital to the Lyell McEwin Hospital will be about $900 per trip, and is the estimated total cost of ambulance transfers about $1 million per year?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (14:38): I do not know what the cost of an individual trip is, what the cost is to the department; I can find that out. But, can I say a couple of things about the way our hospital system works. For one thing, it is important that, when you have particular specialised services, where those specialised services are provided, the clinicians who are providing those services are doing so on a regular basis.

Firstly, it is not efficient, but secondly and more importantly, it is not clinically safe to provide a full range of services at every possible site, because the doctors who are providing those services are not doing enough of a particular procedure to become proficient at it. I was in a meeting last night with the president of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, who was telling me that—I think he was talking about vascular surgery—if they were doing 30 procedures a year, then that was a much safer number with far fewer complications than if they were doing only 10.

So, it makes good clinical sense for us to concentrate particular highly specialised services at a few locations. Occasionally, what that means is that patients are going to have to be transferred. They are transferred for their own safety and for best clinical outcomes. Obviously, they are also transferred because that provides us with a more effective and efficient health system which is able to deliver more services to South Australians.

The SPEAKER: The member for Heysen is warned for the first time. The member for Morphett.