House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program Mrs HURN House of Assembly Schubert Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:44): My question is for the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. How many of the 59 recommendations from the independent governance review of the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program at the Women's and Children's Hospital have now been implemented in full? The Hon. C.J. PICTON House of Assembly Kaurna Minister for Health and Wellbeing Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:45): As the member knows, we conducted a review through a group of interstate experts into the governance of the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program at the Women's and Children's Health Network and it raised a substantial number of recommendations that needed to be implemented for the program itself, for the Women's and Children's Health Network more broadly, and also for the health system more broadly. I appointed Professor Chris Baggoley, the former Chief Medical Officer of both South Australia and Australia, to oversee an implementation group that also includes consumer representatives to make sure that we implement each and every one of those recommendations. They have been going through a process of essentially supervising and monitoring each of those recommendations, monitoring when they have been met and that people have actually done all of those steps that have been required. They have been meeting regularly. I understand that they have met even in the past couple of weeks. I am just trying to see if I have an updated figure, but I will certainly provide, on notice, the exact number of those recommendations that have been implemented. There have been a number that have been implemented already at the Women's and Children's Health Network, including additional staff that have been brought on as part of the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program there to provide additional support. Even as of this week, we implemented another one of those recommendations whereby part of the broader system recommendations was to have in place steps for induction of board members across the state. One of the things that that review identified was that the issues that were apparent in that program weren't being brought to the board level of the Women's and Children's Health Network and weren't being supervised by that board that was, of course, brought about through the reforms of the previous government. When those boards were put in place, there was no induction process, there was no process where those board members were provided with information in terms of their responsibilities under the Health Care Act and their responsibilities in terms of the clinical governance of the health services that they supervise. As of this week—in fact, just this week on Monday—we had the first of those inductions taking place. All of our board members from across the state met and had that induction process, and that's something that will continue. That's just one of those many dozens of recommendations that are being implemented and being monitored.