Mental Health

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): Just on this issue of the Central Adelaide mental health backlog, can the minister explain why this problem has existed for some time? In fact, analysis shows that some 75 per cent of the mental health patients who are stuck in emergency departments waiting for an inpatient bed come from just two hospitals: The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Royal Adelaide Hospital. What active steps is the minister taking to address this chronic problem?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:21): The active steps that we're taking is rolling out short-stay wards which have been demonstrated to be very effective in improving the flow of mental health patients through our emergency departments. We've got now a short-stay ward at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Flinders Medical Centre, and we are investigating the possibility of rolling out short-stay wards to at least two other locations at the moment, and I hope we can make a decision about that very, very shortly.

I think with regard to the issues we've had in mental health, when we implemented the Stepping Up report certain assumptions were made about the ability of ICC beds to be able to substitute acute care beds, which I think have proven to be misplaced, and we do need to have another look at that. We also need to look at how our ICC beds work to make sure that the chronic-type patient, who tends to have a very long length of stay in acute beds, is transferred into ICCs where they can be better looked after so that the acute bed can be released for a patient who is waiting in the emergency department. This is a body of work that's been going on, and we are implementing these changes.