Hospital Beds

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): Supplementary, sir: given that the minister has confirmed to me in his questions without notice response (which I have received today) that there are 250 beds at the Repatriation General Hospital, and the government has already confirmed that 55 of those beds will be transferred to the Flinders Medical Centre, 24 to the Glenside precinct, 15 for the hospice and that 30 older persons mental health beds will be transferred, can the minister confirm to the house that, in fact, there will be a net reduction of 126 inpatient beds in the southern system?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:30): We will be increasing the number of beds that we have got in other locations throughout the system. As always, the number of beds that we have is determined by the amount of activity. That is how we set the number of beds. If we have more activity then we increase the number of beds to cater for that extra activity.

I would also point out that we are increasing the number of beds—well, the capacity at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital caters for a significant increase in the number of beds—and we are also increasing the number of beds at the Lyell McEwin Hospital. So, all of these things are interdependent and, as always, we set the number of beds depending on the amount of activity that we have.