Royal Adelaide Hospital

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:34): I have a supplementary question. Can the minister also inform the house how long the transition from the old RAH to the new RAH will take and what the budget for that transition will be?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:35): The overall budget for the transition is already on record, but that's not just for the one week, and that's because obviously it is not something that is just done in a week; it is a process that takes many months if not years to plan for. The government announced additional funding a couple of years ago, I think it was, with the funding around that, so that is already on the record.

With regard to how long the transition will take, we expect that it will be about a week but, having said that, it would be preceded by a lead-up period of ramp down. We need to decant as many patients from the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital as we safely can do, and we anticipate it will probably be at about half capacity when we do that. We will be moving activity from the Royal Adelaide Hospital to other hospital sites. We will probably take advantage of our peri-urban hospitals to help us to do that. That would be a period of about six weeks or so to do that, and then it would probably take another six weeks after that for us to have the new Royal Adelaide Hospital running at full capacity.

In terms of the actual movement of patients, we would see that happening in a relatively short period of time. There are significant risks involved in having two hospitals running in parallel, so it is important that we get that done as quickly and safely as we possibly can.