Hospital Waiting Times

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:15): Could the minister perhaps explain to the house why Noarlunga Hospital slipped 46 positions in the national rankings last year, Modbury Hospital slipped 86 positions in the rankings last year, Flinders Medical Centre came 123^rd out of 124 hospitals in the rankings, and the Royal Adelaide Hospital came last?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:15): There is little I can add to what I have already said. I have acknowledged the fact—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader is warned for the second and final time and he will not shout all through my attempt to warn him.

The Hon. P. Caica interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Colton is called to order.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING: There is little I can add to what I have said and that is we have acknowledged we do need to improve our hospital system; in particular, we need to improve how quickly we admit patients once the decision is taken to admit. I had an opportunity to travel to the Alfred Hospital a few weeks ago in Melbourne and I must say there are a lot of lessons which we can learn from the Alfred Hospital. It is a standout.

One of the things which they have pioneered is having direct admission rights so that senior emergency doctors take the decision to admit a patient and their patient is admitted into the ward, whereas, of course, what we have in most of our hospitals in South Australia is that often senior consultants have to go to a registrar, who is a more junior doctor to a consultant, to get permission from the registrar to admit a patient into a ward. There are all sorts of things. We need to look at our diagnostics and we need to look at medical imaging. Every aspect of the hospital we need to examine to work out how we can make it more efficient and, as I said earlier, how we make it work better, particularly after hours when we have some of the biggest delays.

We saw data last week which looked at the frequency of discharges from hospitals on Sunday compared to during the week. There are roughly half the number of discharges on a Sunday compared to a Friday, so it is no wonder that on Monday mornings when people present to our emergency departments, our emergency departments are overflowing with patients needing an acute bed because very few people have been discharged over the Sunday. These are all the sorts of things which we need to address, and we will address these issues. I would call upon the opposition, rather than just behaving like ambulance chasers, to join with the government in a bipartisan way—not to behave like ambulance chasers but to engage with the system and to join the government in a bipartisan way—to look at how we can make our hospitals work better.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned for the first time. The member for Hammond is called to order, and I remind the leader that if his lips move out of order for the remaining 51 minutes of question time, I will have no choice but to suspend him from the service of the house under the sessional order. Leader, next question.

Mr GARDNER: We give you a list, sir, so that you can have these all ordered. Can I have the call, sir?

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta is correct, he is next on the list.