Hospital Avoidance Hubs

Mrs PEARCE (King) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update the house on how the new ED avoidance hubs will provide relief to our emergency departments?

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:35): I thank the member for King for her question and for her interest in making sure that South Australians can get timely care across the health system. Yesterday, the Premier, the Treasurer and I were able to visit Sefton Park, where there is an emergency department avoidance hub that has been in operation, to see the work that the doctors and nurses have been providing at Sefton Park through the Central Adelaide Local Health Network.

This is one of currently two hubs that are in operation in the metro area at the moment. The other is in the southern suburbs based at the Repat site, which is called the SALHN CARE model, which is specifically focused on older people at the moment.

Between those two hubs, they are able to take a substantial number of emergency ambulance visits and also urgent referrals from GPs and virtual care services—people who otherwise might have gone to emergency departments but can get a level of care at these centres that is somewhere in between the life-saving emergency department care and GP standard care. It's a higher level of care that can provide that intermediate level of care, which is important in terms of people avoiding the need to go to emergency departments when they might be able to get care elsewhere.

We were able to speak to a number of the patients who just happened to be there yesterday who had been brought there. All spoke very highly in terms of the care that was being provided, the way they had been treated and the timeliness of that care, so ultimately it was a good outcome for those patients and a good outcome for the health system overall because it means that those patients don't end up unnecessarily in emergency departments, ambulances don't end up unnecessarily getting ramped at emergency departments and much faster care for those people overall.

That is why we have committed in tomorrow's state budget to establishing two more of these centres—one to be in the northern suburbs and one to be in the western suburbs—so we will have a network of four of these centres across the city. That will mean right across metropolitan Adelaide there will be the ability either for GPs to refer to one of these centres, other than referring their patients to an emergency department, or for ambulances to take patients there instead.

This is obviously just one part of our emergency department avoidance strategies. The other area that has been talked about recently as well was in terms of the work that we are doing in relation to people with mental health conditions who might otherwise be able to seek care other than going to an emergency department, which often can be a very disruptive place in terms of the lights and the noises. It's not necessarily a great place, unless you really need to be in one.

Obviously, we have the Urgent Mental Health Care Centre in the city, but we are also establishing a new crisis intervention service in the northern suburbs together with the federal government. We are working with the federal government also on new Head to Health services that will be based in the Adelaide Hills and also in the southern suburbs, with one specifically focused in the southern suburbs on children who have very little other option at the moment other than going to the Women's and Children's Hospital emergency department, which we know has seen an increased number of mental health presentations.

So, overall, between the work on these emergency department avoidance hubs and the mental health Head to Health services and other urgent mental health services, the other mental health service of course that we have recently established is the service that has been running in partnership with Sonder and the Adelaide PHN in the Salisbury area as well. All of these provide benefits for patients and less pressure on our emergency departments.