Health Services

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:36): Today, I would like to bring to the attention of the house two case studies that reflect the reality and experience of people in our health and wellbeing system in South Australia. It is fine for the government members here to spend time congratulating themselves on what a wonderful job they are doing, but when you hear the case studies and the examples—real examples on the ground—it does paint a very different picture from what we are told in this place.

One of the examples I would like to highlight today is about an elderly lady, an 82-year-old woman who is a patient at the Gawler Health Service. Sadly, she has a terminal illness and has been in and out of hospital for quite some time over the last five to six months. You would think that a person of that age and that condition would receive the best care possible in our state, but she has not, and I will give you the example of what has happened to this lady.

At the outset, I would like to say that this is not a reflection on the staff who work in our Gawler Health Service, because they can only do the best they can with the resources they are given. It must be extremely frustrating for those nurses and other staff in our hospitals who cannot do their job properly or to the standard they would like because of the lack of resources.

In this case, the patient, the daughter of Mrs Morgan (I have been given permission to use her name) raised the matter with me because she went to visit her mother in the hospital at night after she had been admitted just recently. What her mother was served for dinner was not fit for human consumption—it was absolutely disgraceful. It was two pieces of bread with some cheese in between and was so hard that the daughter could almost break the plate on which it came. This is a person who is in her 80s who was unable to eat that food.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case. The daughter, Ms Anne Foster, asked me to share her Facebook entry on my social media and to make sure the message got out, and a number of other examples have been brought to my attention as well. As a number of people interacting with my Facebook account have said, the government has been cutting back on the cost of meals as this is the easiest way to cut costs in hospitals.

In fact, the staff at the hospital have told the patients and told Ms Foster that the best way to cut costs is to reduce meals so that they only get one what you might call 'hot meal' a day, and that is reserved for lunchtime, and at night-time the patients in this hospital will basically just get a sandwich. That is not satisfactory. People in our health and wellbeing system deserve better. When dear Ms Foster tried to raise the matter, she was given very poor responses, and again this is not the staff but the way our health system is being managed.

Another part of our health system that is very important is our ambulance service. Just recently, I raised some examples of our ambulance service in Gawler, which is under-resourced. Another example has come to my attention about the lack of resourcing for ambulance services. We have one unit in the town. It is a growing community, and when that unit is carrying somebody from one hospital to another hospital, or from an incident to a hospital, particularly to the Lyell McEwin Hospital where they have to ramp up, our town lacks an ambulance service, and it can go for hours.

Another example has been brought to my attention, and I will read from the message this mother has sent to me:

Hi Tony, I'm a little concerned about the emergency services and resources. My son had a nasty turn with his epilepsy on the weekend. He was distressed and in excruciating pain. We thought it would be faster to go to the hospital than wait for an ambulance as we live around the corner. When I got to the hospital—

they had to transfer the patient, the child—

they called an ambulance. This was around 10.30pm. At 2am in the morning SAAS called and said they wouldn't get to us until after 5am and I was then asked to transport my son down to the [Women's and Children's Hospital] and if I had an issue to pull over and call for an ambulance.

This is the reality of people's experience in my community of our health and wellbeing system. First, they get poorly treated in our hospitals, not because the staff do not do the job properly but because of lack of resources. Secondly, with respect to our ambulance services and our paramedics, I have spoken to a number of paramedics in my community who are concerned about not being able to do their job properly and service the community because of lack of resources. Our community deserves better from this government.

Time expired.