Emergency Departments

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:09): A supplementary?

The SPEAKER: Deputy leader.

Ms CHAPMAN: Thank you, sir. To the Minister for Health: given the minister's answer in respect of the difficult position of South Australia in respect of flu, what action has he taken to ensure that next winter we are not faced with the same 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) (14:09): There is only a limited amount I can do about the flu although we have taken some steps, for example, providing for pharmacists who are appropriately trained to be able to give the flu vaccination. Data is still coming through about how much, or what effect that has had in terms of increasing the take-up of flu vaccination by South Australians. I think we will probably see over the next couple of years a significant take-up, as more and more people get the flu vaccination, you get what we call 'herd immunity' so there is less opportunities for transmission of the flu, the more people who have the flu vaccination.

Obviously we are doing things at that end, and we doing a lot around education, encouraging people, firstly to get a flu vaccination, but also to take simple precautions to make sure that they do not transmit the flu. From the other point of what we are doing in our emergency departments, well, there is any number of things that we are doing actually in our hospitals—it is called Transforming Health, and Transforming Health is all about making our hospitals work more smoothly so that people spend less time in our emergency departments.

One of the key reasons people wait in our emergency departments is that when they require an acute bed, there is not an acute bed available for them. With the changes that we are making, with improving the flows for our hospitals through streaming our acuity in our hospitals, all of these measures are very effective and they are demonstrated interstate and overseas to improve access and to improve bed availability, which at the end of the day is going to mean that you are going to improve the emergency department performance.