Patient Assistance Transport Scheme

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Health. Can the minister advise the house if the Patient Assistance Transport Scheme's processing times for claims have improved? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Late last year, the minister told the house that work was underway to improve processing times which at one stage blew out to six to eight weeks for reimbursements to be repaid.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:55): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question but also his passion and interest in terms of health care for his electorate and broadly for regional South Australia. I also thank the other members of the crossbench—the member for Mount Gambier, the member for Narungga and the member for Stuart—who have raised these issues in terms of PATS advocating, of course, as the Independents do on behalf of their regional communities.

It is true, as the member said, that PATS, which is a very important scheme, did see a big uplift in terms of the demand on the scheme. Usually it had a benchmark processing time of around four weeks, and we did see that increase to around six to eight weeks. That coincided with the increase that we made to the fuel subsidy that we provide, doubling that, which is the biggest uplift in terms of support for people through PATS in the past two decades which saw increased demand in terms of claims.

Since then, there has been a lot of work done by the Rural Support Service and local health networks based regionally to make sure that we can bring that back. They brought in additional temporary staff, they improved some of their processing, they made sure that they were freeing up time with assessors and they implemented a quick claims assessment process for those more straightforward applications. I have been regularly monitoring this and asking questions of the Rural Support Service in terms of their progress, and I am delighted to be able to inform that there has been significant progress made in terms of this.

If you look back to where we were in October, there were 822 online applications that had been waiting over six weeks, 1,900 online applications that had been waiting up to four weeks and a number of other paper applications as well. To compare that, we got that down in January. There were no applications in January waiting longer than four weeks and there were 1,400 applications waiting up to four weeks, including paper applications—so that's a significant improvement.

But then as of now, 20 March, that number—which was originally 822 online applications over six weeks and 1,900 up to four weeks; so a very significant number of 2,700-odd—was down to 159 applications awaiting processing and the processing time was in the order of one to three days. That is a huge turnaround and I want to pay credit to everybody who has been involved in the Rural Support Service and the PATS team in terms of that improvement, and I thank the member and the Independent colleagues for raising this issue.

That's obviously way in advance of our previous standard in terms of that four weeks, endeavouring from now on to make sure that we are well inside that four weeks, and I am sure the member and his colleagues will keep us honest in terms of that into the future. But this is ultimately of benefit for people across the state who need to, in many cases, visit Adelaide or travel to other regional centres to receive their treatment.

I was just last week travelling with the member for Giles and the member for Stuart through regional South Australia, visiting places such as Leigh Creek, Kimba and Hawker, where we opened the new Leigh Creek Health Service and the new Hawker ambulance station, and visiting Kimba hospital, which was the 71^st hospital in South Australia I have visited. In all these places, PATS is a very important scheme and is very relied upon by the community, so I am sure that this improvement we have seen in terms of the processing time will be welcome news for everyone in regional areas across the state.