Aged-Care Facilities

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:22): My question again is to the Minister for Health. Given the Chief Psychiatrist's public statements that around eight older people, who would previously have been transferred to Oakden, are stuck in acute hospitals, can the minister advise the house whether this access block issue is one of the causes of chronic overcrowding at our emergency departments in South Australia?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:22): I think what the Chief Psychiatrist would have been referring to—I have not seen those remarks—would not have been patients stuck in emergency departments; they would have been patients in inpatient beds in our hospitals. It is an issue having patients in our hospitals who require alternative accommodation. Generally, the biggest issue we have is patients requiring admission into an aged-care facility, so it is not unusual for this to be an issue in our hospitals, that we have people in our inpatient beds who would be better accommodated elsewhere.

I don't think the Chief Psychiatrist would have been referring to patients in our emergency departments because we have been very successful in having a massive reduction in mental health patients stuck for long periods of time in our emergency departments, and it is now only very occasionally that we see mental health patients in for longer than a day. I get a daily update on the length of stay of mental health patients in our emergency departments, and I have to say that the incidence of mental health patients waiting in our emergency departments for longer than a day is very occasional.