Hospital Beds

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:43): Supplementary: can the minister at least confirm, or clarify to the house, that there will be an increase in the number of general medical beds across the two northern hospitals?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:44): That's certainly my understanding. Let me make it clear: that is after the changes with the transfer of activity from central Adelaide to northern Adelaide. Yes, my advice is that there will be more beds across those two hospitals after these changes because we have to move activity from central Adelaide to northern Adelaide and so beds will be moved as part of that.

But, as I say, we do need to change the political rhetoric; just talking about inputs in health will get us nowhere. I say that my side of politics is as guilty of this as the other side of politics. For too long the rhetoric in health has been about how many beds you have, how many doctors you have, and how many nurses you have, as if these things were in and of themselves a good thing. We really need to change the rhetoric and change the politic debate. What people are interested in is there being a bed available for them when they need it and the amount of activity. If we can push through and have more activity happening in our hospitals than happens currently, that's an improvement. If we can do that with fewer beds we will.

The fact is that health care is changing and health care is very different from what it was 50 years ago. We don't need as many inpatient beds and, in fact, I think the biggest reduction in inpatient beds, from memory, happened the last time the Liberal Party were in office. That is not a criticism, because health care needs are changing. The predominance of day surgery has just increased exponentially. We want more people who are in palliative care to be able to receive that palliative care at home. It is a complete problem that we have too many dying patients who are dying in intensive care rather than dying in comforting surroundings at home or in their nursing home with family around them.

So, I make no apology for wanting to shift the way we talk about, and the way we conduct our health debate away from, inputs as if those inputs were in and of themselves a good thing, and to talk far more about how many patients are going through our system and how many people we are seeing, how many people are waiting in our emergency departments and how many people are waiting for elective surgery. And, on both those things, I am the first to admit, we don't do very well, despite the fact that we spend more than any other state, despite the fact that we have more hospital beds, more nurses, more doctors than any other state, yet we don't do very well and we should be doing much better in seeing people waiting for elective surgery and people waiting in emergency departments.

The answer is not to just throw more money at the problem as if that would automatically fix it. The answer is to improve and restructure our system to make it work far better than it currently does. These are the reforms that this government is determined to see through.