Public Works Committee: Modbury Hospital Transforming Health Project

Adjourned debate on motion of Ms Digance:

That the 530^th report of the committee, entitled Modbury Hospital Transforming Health Project, be noted.

(Continued from 14 October 2015.)

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (11:48): My, how things have changed since the last time I spoke on this motion on 14 October 2015. Unfortunately, I may not get to finish my remarks today. As I was cut off at that untimely moment over a year ago, I was winding up to talk to you about the services being provided at the Modbury Hospital emergency department. I had just recounted the story of how my son had had a stroke, and the department was busy and they told me to give him an aspirin. The corollary to that story is that, as a parent who had some inside feeling that the right place to be was the Women's and Children's Hospital, that is where I took my son. Of course, he has had really good care and recovered completely and leads a normal and full life now.

The purpose of my mentioning that particular case was to illustrate to people that, with the health system the way it is going to be, unless we educate people on how to understand where the services are going to be and how best to access the services they need, the whole Transforming Health program, project, transformation is not going to work as well as we need it to. All of it hinges, I believe, on a universal emergency ambulance subscription scheme, which is something I am going to work really hard on in the next few months. I will push home the importance of such a system as hard as I can.

Mr Pengilly: I would be surprised if you didn't.

Ms BEDFORD: Yes, and I would be looking at you to help me, member for Finniss. We know that the Ambulance Service has been substantially strengthened by this Labor government, for which I commend them, but we also know that there are some significant problems with the Ambulance Service.

Perhaps today I will not go into that quite as much as I will in future, but it is important for everyone to understand that the Ambulance Service must be resourced properly so that care can come to you as quickly as you need it. We know that 60 per cent of people drive themselves to hospital while they are having their emergency, which is clearly not good for anybody, neither themselves nor the people on the roads with them. We need to make sure that the Ambulance Service is working as well as it possibly can and that it is resourced as much as it needs to be.

The other point I will make around the Modbury Hospital is the improvement we will see from the 24/7 coverage of orthopaedics through Transforming Health changes. Neither the Modbury Hospital nor the Lyell McEwin Hospital had 24/7 coverage of orthopaedics. This will now be in existence at the Lyell McEwin health service. It will be really important that people from the Modbury area and farther afield into Ingle Farm and Pooraka actually understand that those services will be available for them at the Lyell McEwin health service.

One matter that was brought up in the first question I asked the Minister for Health in my new role as an Independent for the area was around the emergency department services at Modbury Hospital. He did say in his answer, when I asked my supplementary—you will find it if you go back to the Hansard of April—that the emergency department needs to have access to long stay, acute care beds. Without those acute care beds at the Modbury Hospital, the transferring of people backwards and forwards to the Lyell McEwin will only increase. We need to see that we can look after people who just need that one extra day of care rather than moving them between hospitals. This is another area we will have to really focus on if we are to make Transforming Health work as well as it can.

The other issue I need to bring up is another personal experience, which I touched on briefly previously, which was my overnight visit to the emergency section of the Modbury Hospital to have something removed from my eye. Because I was not bleeding, I was sent to wait in the corner, which was fine, but the damage being done to my eyeball by a piece of stone in my eyelid was almost as catastrophic as bleeding to death on the floor. If I had lost my eye, I would have been very unimpressed. I know our nurses are working as best they can, but we need to have a bit of a think about how we triage at hospitals and make sure that it is working really well for people when they arrive.

Another thing that I found most disconcerting was that, for my four-hour stay between midnight and 4am, I had a parking fee. As members would know, in the past I advocated very strongly in this place for the first three hours free, but I was only able to achieve the first two hours free. However, I still do not understand why we need to be charging people, particularly in the car park that we own, for car parking between midnight and, say, 6am. That is another thing that I will be pursuing, and I look forward to assistance from my new chums on my right.

Again, in terms of the history of the Modbury Hospital, members need to understand that I have been there from almost the very beginning. Unfortunately, I was not able to keep birthing services at the Modbury Hospital. We have an excellent birthing service at the Lyell McEwin, but that is not the point of the story. The point of the story is that the doctors could not guarantee epidurals at all hours of the day and night at Modbury Hospital so, with that in mind, we had to transfer everything to the Lyell McEwin.

I will also talk later on about extending the wonderful Mother Carer service. I am sure you know about that, member for Little Para. It is an absolutely amazing service. That needs to be extended, increased and provided at other sites. There will be a lot more said about birthing in this place before the end of the year. I look forward to working cooperatively with members on all sides of the house and the crossbenches as we look at that.

The really good thing that we have to understand is the rehabilitation service that has opened at the Modbury Hospital. Everyone was really pleased to be able to have a look through at the services, which are amazing. Everything that is new is wonderful, of course. It was not possible for everyone in the north-east to get through on the open days, so I will see what I can do about trying to make sure that another couple of tours go through the place because several of the older members of our area missed out on seeing it and are quite excited to know that those services will be closer to their homes. This is another really good part about Transforming Health: making sure that the people of the north and north-east have those services close by.

The rehab service brings to light that there is a large proportion of people over 60 in my area—at least 38 per cent, as far as I know—which means that representation for the over 60s in this place becomes a much more important fact. I am sure that that message will not be lost on very many people in the chamber here today.

To recap, we have new services at Modbury Hospital and increased services at Modbury Hospital, but different services. That is the sort of point we need to drive home so that people understand the services available close to them in their general hospitals. We then need people to understand where their closest major hospital is. Particularly in the crossover between the old RAH and the new RAH, we are going to need to make sure that people use the major hospital closest to them.

I have been through the Lyell McEwin health service a couple of times recently. Most people do not realise that it has changed completely from the time it was a Nissen hut in a paddock. It is a huge complex now, and millions of dollars have been poured into making sure that it is a great facility. I will add two notes of caution. In his response in April, the minister did also say that the emergency department at the Lyell McEwin needed some attention, inasmuch as it is working very hard, but that it may need not only some extra facilities but also extra staff.

Parking at the Lyell McEwen health service remains a contentious and very important issue for people. The car park is six or seven storeys high. The car park is not owned by the government; it is privately owned. There must be some way, though, that we can put some pressure on to make sure that people are able to park safely in a secure car park, particularly between the hours of midnight and 6 am when there is not going to be a call for parking anywhere else.

While commending Transforming Health to people, I do strike a couple of notes of caution. As I said, I look forward to informing the house in the next few sitting weeks of the really important things that I think need to be done, particularly around the access to a universal emergency ambulance scheme in South Australia, as exists in other states already.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (11:57): The 530^th report of the Public Works Committee, noting the Modbury Hospital Transforming Health project, seems such a distant memory. The focus of the project was the establishment of additional rehabilitation capacity, which I think commenced more than 18 months ago. There will be a new ambulatory rehabilitation centre, inclusive of a gymnasium and a hydrotherapy pool, with the same dimensions as those in Flinders and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

During the hearing, we were told that the hydro pool facilities were a vital ingredient in the north because the local community had been undersupplied with rehab capacity. I reiterate what the member for Florey just commented on because there is still more to be done out there. We know that Transforming Health does have some deficiencies. There are some hospitals and care facilities that are going to miss out for the sake of propping up the NRAH in the city.

We were told a number of things during the hearing, that there would be 54 rehab beds and a new ambulatory centre. The total cost of the project was $32 million, GST exclusive. I asked a number of questions, such as whether the emergency department at the hospital would be open 24/7 and whether the project would address local concerns that patients will be delivered past Modbury if there are life-threatening issues.

Professor Keefe did answer some of these questions, but there was a lot of mist around what she actually meant when we asked what services Modbury would provide, what it would not provide and how many people, and under what circumstances, would bypass Modbury Hospital for the Lyell McEwin and, in some cases, farther afield. As I said, Modbury Hospital has had significant work done on it and the rehab centre has been upgraded. I commend the report to the house.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (11:59): I rise to support the motion to note the report, and I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.