Question Time

Emergency Departments

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:06): My question is to the Minister for Health. Given that at 7pm last night all metropolitan emergency departments were operating over capacity, why is the government failing to provide capacity of emergency care for South Australians when they need it?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:06): As of this morning, all our hospitals, except for one, were on green, and this testament to the reforms we made and the fact that they are working. What we're seeing is that our emergency departments are certainly very, very busy, and we are seeing lots and lots of presentations, a record number of presentations.

I can't stop people from presenting to our emergency departments, but what I can do is make sure that when we do experience those surges we get through them, we process them through the emergency department as quickly as possible, we admit patients who need to be admitted and we discharge patients who need to be discharged. Without doubt, given what I saw when I last looked, which was this morning (it might have changed a little bit in the last couple of hours), all our hospitals had done a magnificent job in clearing out those very busy emergency departments. All our EDs, when I checked this morning, except for one, were on green.