Intensive Care Unit Beds

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:49): My question is to the Premier. Exactly how many ICU beds do we currently have in the state and how many are you creating?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:49): Again, I don't have that number with me but, as I indicated in my previous answer, we have done modelling that would suggest that we need to double that. That doesn't mean that we are not also taking other decisions to try to look at the types and the cohorts of people who need to have ICU in South Australia under normal circumstances and seeing what we can do to eliminate that during the peak.

So this is one of the reasons why we have tried to bring forward much of our elective surgery. We spent $45 million to halve our elective surgery waiting list because what we know is that that there is a cohort of patients, even post elective surgery, who will need to go into ICU. We just won't be in a position, with finite resources, to have those patients in ICU unnecessarily.

So we are trying to do whatever we can to suppress the need for ICU in the general population by making some of those planning decisions, as well as increasing the capacity of beds, ventilators, ECMO, nursing capability and doctor availability. This is one area that I think we have done extremely well in, as in so many other areas. We have to be very grateful for the people who are working so diligently on this. They have put South Australia in an enviable position to be able to tackle this when the peak hits.