Mental Health Services Review

Ms PRATT (Frome) (14:27): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the minister taken any immediate action to respond to the Dunk review's recommendation about the Royal Adelaide Hospital ED model of care? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Ms PRATT: System findings of the independent review into the care of Mr Shaun Dunk state that the RAH ED model of care is not an appropriate environment to accommodate an acutely unwell mental health patient waiting for a bed. It was reported yesterday by SASMOA that wait times for mental health beds are now up to 95 hours.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:27): I thank the member for Frome for this important question. As has been publicly noted on Saturday, the government released the summary report in relation to the review that I ordered the Chief Psychiatrist to commission into the attack that happened that really shocked the state at the end of last year.

Obviously, there is a man who is before the courts at the moment who is accused of murder and attempted murder and I will, of course, be careful in my comments because the last thing I want to do is do anything that would cause issue for the upcoming court case.

We have released the recommendations of that review. Importantly, I think it is worth noting to the house that the review did state:

…there was no evidence of any individual clinician’s assessment, treatment or decisions falling below an acceptable standard or not being justifiable at that point of time with the information available to them.

Having said that, it did make a number of recommendations to systemic issues that needed to be addressed in our mental health care system more broadly, particularly at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and also for the Urgent Mental Health Care Centre, which is the centre we contract on Grenfell Street as well, and a number of more broad recommendations in terms of the management of mental health.

The immediate action I have taken is to instruct both the chief executive of the health department, Dr Robyn Lawrence, and the Chief Psychiatrist of South Australia, Dr John Brayley, to oversee the implementation of all those recommendations. I understand they met with the teams yesterday to begin that work of implementing all those recommendations, and we will ensure they are all implemented.

Clearly the access block I spoke about earlier, in relation to the question from the Leader of the Opposition, is apparent in terms of mental health as well, where you see people waiting, particularly in the Royal Adelaide Hospital emergency department, for an inpatient mental health bed for significant periods of time. That is why we made the decision, in terms of the development of a policy agenda, to invest specifically in terms of additional mental health capacity as a key part of our investments.

What we will see is well over 100 additional mental health beds come into the system, including three key new centres of mental health rehabilitation at Noarlunga, QEH and Modbury Hospital that are being constructed and that will be open by the end of next year, which will provide much-needed additional capacity. As well, the new Mount Barker Hospital will have new mental health capacity in the Adelaide Hills for the first time, and the Women's and Children's Hospital is to have increased mental health capacity, as well as increasing mental health capacity going into mental health Hospital in the Home services. This is as well as what we announced subsequent to the election of expanding mental health services at Flinders Medical Centre and the Margaret Tobin unit there.

There is a very clear emphasis from us on increasing the capacity to reduce the significant access block that mental health clients face when they have been through the emergency department and are waiting for that inpatient bed. Of course, anything we can do to address that, in addition to those beds, we will do as well. Clearly those recommendations, in terms of improving the model of care, are critical as part of that.