Wallaroo Hospital

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:06): I have a question for the Minister for Health. Can the minister inform my constituents how many instances there have been of Code Yellow at Wallaroo Hospital and whether that has resulted in any instances of ambulance ramping in the last three months alone and whether those statistics might finally trigger significant investment in our major hospital?

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert, order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:06): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I also thank the member for Narungga for a question that is actually relevant and important to the people of South Australia because this is—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —a very important subject not only in terms of—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: Putin doesn't believe in state records.

The SPEAKER: Member for Unley!

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Schubert is warned.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Mr Speaker, they are not interested in hearing about Wallaroo Hospital in the Liberal Party, clearly.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: This is a very important question, particularly in terms of that critical regional level of service at Wallaroo Hospital but also, as the member was suggesting, in terms of flow-on impacts to the broader health services as well. I have briefly made contact with the chief executive, Mr Roger Kirchner, of the Yorke and Northern Local Health Network. He has provided some preliminary advice, at least, that he is not aware of any Code Yellows being called at Wallaroo Hospital, but I will certainly get further checking and updating of that and, if there is additional information to provide, I certainly will provide that to the member.

But we do know that our regional health services, both at Wallaroo and across the board, are under pressure. We do know that at Wallaroo in particular we have significant workforce issues as well, and this is an issue that has been raised with me by a number of GPs in that health region, where there hasn't been the close collaboration, I think it's fair to say, between the hospitals and the GPs. That is something I am very eager to change because we need to work with our general practitioners, who do an incredible job across regional South Australia.

There is some excellent work happening in various parts of regional South Australia, certainly in the Riverland and Murray Coorong local hospital network, with leadership from Paul Worley, who runs the excellent school in the Riverland. It is doing excellent work in terms of training up the next generation of rural generalists, but we need to do work in terms of making that across the board, and I think that there is much more work that we need to do.

I know the member, who is very quick to raise a whole range of issues in terms of his electorate with me and I thank him for doing that, has also raised with me that, with the connections between the GPs and the hospitals, there is the potential that we could improve that and there is a willingness from GPs to work closer with the hospital. I am certainly following that up with the board.

We are going up next week to hold our country cabinet because we as a government believe that we should be holding cabinet meetings in regional South Australia. We will be holding cabinet meetings in Port Pirie and Port Augusta. While in Port Pirie, I will be meeting with the board of the health network that covers Wallaroo Hospital as well and raising these issues with them because the more services we can provide in your local community, the fewer people who have to travel to Adelaide for those services and the less pressure on the rest of the system.

We have already made significant commitments in terms of improving the regional health services. That's why the Premier was very quick when we made our announcement from opposition that we would cancel the $662 million basketball stadium from the then government and that we would quarantine at least $100 million of that into regional health services. We're now delivering that. Of course, I know the member is certainly excited that extra, additional ambulance services will be provided in his electorate, based out of Wallaroo, to help address some of these issues.

Of course, we know that we need additional work in our hospitals to make sure people can flow through and get the care they need. I will come back if there is further information I can provide to the member, but certainly I look forward to continuing to work with him to improve those local health services.