Lyell McEwin Hospital

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:12): My question again is to the Minister for Health. What has SA Health done to address delays in radiology support at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, given the Workplace Safety report which identifies that a car accident emergency patient at Lyell McEwin had their treatment delayed for over three hours because of problems in communicating with the England-based private radiology service?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (15:12): We have had difficulty recruiting additional radiologists to the Lyell McEwin Hospital. Given that we have had no difficulty recruiting to central Adelaide and the Royal Adelaide Hospital—we have had plenty of applicant radiologists to the Royal Adelaide Hospital—it does make you wonder why it would be difficult to recruit to the Lyell McEwin Hospital.

What we have done is gone out to the private sector through, I think, an expression of interest process to find whether there are private radiology providers who are able to supplement our government-salaried radiologists at the Lyell McEwin Hospital to overcome this issue. It is a very grave issue, with the enormous increase in presentations we have had at the Lyell McEwin Hospital and the increase in complete complexity of those presentations at the Lyell McEwin Hospital. Having a properly resourced radiology department and medical imaging at the Lyell McEwin Hospital is incredibly important.

I do note that the member for Morphett refers to a report done by SASMOA, by the doctors' union. I point out that, at almost every step of the way that we have tried to increase resourcing to the Lyell McEwin Hospital SASMOA have used everything they have in their industrial arsenal to prevent us and to frustrate these changes. I think the doctors' union might have a little bit more credibility with regard to issues at the Lyell McEwin Hospital if they took a far more cooperative approach in terms of bringing out additional resources up there, rather than running a pretty, I think, narrow and short-sighted industrial approach.

Mr GARDNER: Point of order: the minister has stopped answering the question and is now just attacking doctors.

The Hon. J.M. Rankine: He is not.

The SPEAKER: No, the member for Wright is warned for the second and final time and is at grave risk of being suspended for the rest of question time. The Minister for Health is finished.