Royal Adelaide Hospital

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): Supplementary: what number of beds will be deactivated at the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital before the transfer to the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, and at what point will this deactivation occur?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:14): These are operational matters being worked through at the moment, but we suspect it probably needs to be, given that there are 670 beds in the Royal Adelaide Hospital, 300 to 400 beds for what the capacity of the Royal Adelaide would be. What we would do is not simply take 300 or 400 beds out of the system. We would have to displace that activity to other hospitals in the metropolitan area, so that is how we would achieve it. We probably would also be looking at speaking to the private sector and displacing some activity to the private sector as well.

While this is still a work in progress and working through it, taking the activity at the Royal Adelaide Hospital down to, say, roughly 400 beds doesn't necessarily mean we're going to take 300 or 400 beds out of the system. We would be looking at displacing that activity at the other places. Obviously we wouldn't be doing elective surgery as well for a period time at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. They would be the things that we would do to ensure that we were able to get the hospital down to that number.