Transfer of Care Data

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:38): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. When will the minister release the ambulance transfer of care data for the month of June?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:39): Thank you very much to the shadow minister for her question. This is seemingly a repeat of all the other questions that she has asked previously. As per my previous responses, I remind members that this government is committed to releasing monthly stats within a reasonable period of time, as opposed to what happened—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —under the previous government—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —a very different approach—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Badcoe!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —a very different policy approach, because what we saw under the previous government—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —was that it took months and months and months for data to be released.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Now it is daily, apparently.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: There was only a release of that data every three months; that happened under the previous government. Often, it was at least three months delayed from being released. We have already been releasing this data regularly. We will continue to do so.

Mrs Hurn: Weekly, why don't you do weekly?

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is warned.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I said regularly. We have been releasing this data regularly, as per our commitment. Before the election, we called on the previous Marshall government to release the data monthly. We committed to releasing the data monthly, and now we are releasing the data monthly. That's been happening—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is on one warning.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —in a reasonable period of time after each month. That will happen similarly with the June statistics as well. But I think we are all clear that our hospitals—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —are under tremendous pressure at the moment.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is on two warnings.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: As a new government, we are investing huge additional resources in our hospital system—$2.4 billion extra in the most recent state budget—to open an additional 500 beds to deal with the mess that we have inherited from those opposite. We have already opened over 200 beds across the health system to deal with the crisis that we are facing, but we are dealing with a situation where we have COVID cases and flu cases, which we didn't have last year when the hospital system was clearly under significant pressure under the previous government then. We are now dealing with an additional burden on the system.

The latest statistics out today for our hospital system for COVID cases show that we are now up to the highest number of hospitalisations that we have had in the system since 1 February this year, so a five-month high rate of COVID hospitalisations in our system. On top of flu cases as well, this is a significant issue that our hospital system is dealing with. We know the issue that is leading to the transfer of care delays, and that is ultimately patients who are in the emergency department who needed to be admitted to a ward but there simply aren't the beds in wards available to be admitted to.

We have opened over 200 beds already, including last week opening an additional 28 beds in private hospitals, and we are actively exploring any and all possibilities where we might be able to open more. But we have already opened all the beds available within our healthcare system that we have, that we inherited from those opposite. We are actively trying to find additional capacity that we can use, whether it's the private system, whether it's peri-urban hospitals, whether it's anything else we can open up inside our public hospitals. We know that that delay is what's causing the transfer of care, ramping delays, outside the hospital system.

Clearly, there is also the issue in terms of discharges from the system. We have a number of patients who have been in the hospital system for months and months and months. The latest data that we have seen is that over 250 patients have NDIS packages, 120 of whom are ready to be discharged, so that is a huge blockage in the system. That is the equivalent of Noarlunga Hospital full of NDIS patients who are ready to be discharged. This is something that we have been raising at the federal level. It is something that the Minister for Human Services is working on as well. If we can address that, then that is a huge additional capacity in the system.