Stroke Service

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:26): Supplementary: is it true that the services in this particular area, this neurointerventional radiology service for stroke patients, are only offered at the Royal Adelaide Hospital—they are providing the entire statewide service now? If that is the case, how long has that been the situation?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:26): I will check that. Yes, my understanding is that that is so, although there is a doctor at Flinders Medical Centre, who I understand is able to do the procedure, but that procedure would normally be done in a centralised model and absolutely, given that the procedure is highly specialised and relatively rare—it is not a frequent occurrence—you need doctors who are doing the procedure to be doing it all the time. To put it bluntly, you don't want someone sticking a wire into your brain if it's something that they only do every now and then, almost as a sideline.

This has to be something which is centralised and which is done by clinicians who do it the minimum number of times for them to be able to retain their skills. It would certainly, I think, be highly unwise for a procedure like that to be offered at more than one site. Perhaps if there were sufficient demand for it, it could be two, but my feeling would be that it would only be appropriate for it to be offered at one site, given the highly specialised nature of it. I would consider that entirely appropriate, in fact. I think it would probably be reckless to try to undertake it at any more sites than that.