Ambulance Ramping

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:20): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Does the minister take responsibility for ramping in South Australia? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: The Malinauskas Labor government has delivered the worst 16 months of ramping on record, with this government's worst month being 1,100 hours worse than the worst ever month under the former Liberal government.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:20): Thank you very much for the question. Certainly, as we have made very clear in this house, this is our number one priority in terms of addressing the issues—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Schubert, you have asked the question. We have turned to the minister. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —that we see in our healthcare system, and the ramping crisis is top-line of those issues. Of course, as we have said before, to address that you cannot just do one thing. There is not one single fix that can be done to address it. There needs to be a comprehensive—

Mrs Hurn interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Schubert!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —set of measures, as we announced before the election, that we are in the process of implementing to make sure that we can address the issues in terms of patient flow that see people stuck in emergency departments, that mean people get stuck on the ramp, that mean people calling 000 cannot get an ambulance when they need it. Every element of that system we have needed to address in terms of the investments that we are making and in terms of the system improvements that we are putting in place.

Clearly, as we said before the election, we had the ability, more quickly than other measures, to hire additional paramedics. That was clearly needed because, even on days under the previous government and under this government when there was low ramping, we were not seeing response times at the level that they were at four or five years ago. We put in place those additional resources, and we have seen improvements in those response times, as the Premier has articulated.

What we still need to do is address the patient flow situation, where we see regularly people who are stuck in emergency departments waiting for a bed elsewhere in the system. That is partly because we do not have enough beds, and we are in the process of building hundreds and hundreds of extra beds in our healthcare system. This is the first time in decades that this has been tackled. Right now, there are beds under construction at the Lyell McEwin Hospital and beds under construction at Flinders Medical Centre and at the Repat.

Right across the system, we are putting in place additional beds to make sure we have that capacity. Of course, we also have to deal with the issue in terms of making sure that people can leave hospital when they are ready to do so and do not get stuck in hospital longer than they need to be. Part of that is working with the commonwealth government in relation to the NDIS and aged care, which is a key barrier for discharge, but also a measure that we put in the most recent budget is additional staff to work across the weekends in our health networks to make sure that patient flow can continue over those periods and people do not get stuck waiting for discharge.

All these measures need to be addressed in conjunction to make sure that patient flow can happen. As the Premier said, we certainly welcome the fact that we have seen over the past four or five months an improvement compared with the same time last year. We know that there is a long way to go, and that is why we have a very detailed plan in terms of putting these measures in place, very opposite to what we see in terms of no plan, no suggestions whatsoever, other than just attacking and throwing stones at this—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Schubert, member for Morialta! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: What we do not have are propositions of bringing in corporate liquidators, of making staff cuts, of making frontline nurses redundant—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —hundreds and hundreds of frontline nurses, making them redundant, making privatisations. That is not our plan.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, shadow treasurer! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Our plan is about investment in additional—

Mr Cowdrey interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Colton!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Our plan is about investing in additional capacity and additional doctors and nurses and addressing those patient flow issues so that people can get the care that they need.