Public Works Committee: Clare Hospital Central Sterile Store Department Upgrade

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (12:17): I move:

That the 133^rd report of the committee, entitled Clare Hospital Central Sterile Store Department Upgrade Project, be noted.

The Clare Hospital is part of the Yorke and Northern Local Health Network and provides a comprehensive range of medical and surgical services to patients from Clare and the surrounding communities. The hospital is a 24-bed complex that provides accident and emergency services, acute inpatient care, maternal and neonatal services, elective surgery, palliative care, low-complexity chemotherapy and renal dialysis.

Under commonwealth National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, it is required that equipment reprocessing is consistent with relevant national standards. Without a compliant central sterile store department (CSSD), the Clare Hospital's ability to maintain clinical services such as surgery, obstetrics and endoscopies will be at risk. Additionally, infection control risks will remain, including the potential for hospital-acquired infections due to both contamination of medical devices and inappropriate segregation of clean and dirty workflows.

SA Health considered several options to determine the most suitable location for the Clare Hospital CSSD upgrade. The preferred option is for a staged approach which involves a temporary emergency theatre to be built within the existing hospital, enabling the hospital to maintain one operational theatre for emergency maternal services throughout the duration of the project works. A non-staged option was considered but rejected by the local health network as it would leave the hospital without a functioning operating theatre throughout the construction phases. A modular option was also considered, but costs were deemed prohibitive.

The preferred option will upgrade the CSSD and the operating theatre to provide a compliant, modern facility as well as include a refurbishment of associated areas, including support spaces. The works will deliver an upgraded operating theatre and associated spaces, new pass-through washer and pass-through drying cabinets, one new instrument steriliser, one new endoscope washer, two new endoscope drying cabinets, and upgraded services to meet current standards. The following upgrades will also ensure the hospital complies with relevant medical hygiene standards:

internal reconfiguration and structural modification of the CSSD to create sterile unidirectional workflow;

heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades to achieve the segregation of clean and dirty areas; and

supply and installation of new washing, sterilising and storage equipment in compliance with current infection control standards.

Construction is anticipated to commence in May, with the expectation to be practically complete in July next year. The project is expected to cost $7.3 million and will be funded from the regional Asset Sustainment Program.

The committee examined written and oral evidence in relation to the Clare Hospital Central Sterile Store Department Upgrade Project. Witnesses who appeared before the committee were Melissa Nozza, Capital Projects, Department for Health and Wellbeing; Peter Tynan, Director, Greenway Architects; Erin Pietsch, Senior Project Manager, Department for Infrastructure and Transport; and Coenraad Robberts, Executive Director Finance and Corporate Services, Yorke and Northern Local Health Network. I thank the witnesses for their time. I would also like to thank the Deputy Speaker, the member for Light, for his interest in this project and presenting to the committee.

Based upon the evidence considered and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public work.

Ms PRATT (Frome) (12:21): I want to thank the member for Adelaide, the Chair of the Public Works Committee, for her contribution in seeking that this committee report be noted. I rise to speak to the Clare Hospital Central Sterile Store Department Upgrade Project. I want to commence by thanking all the fabulous doctors and nurses who are associated with the Clare Hospital. We are very fortunate in Clare to have such a strong pool of GPs who not only provide life-saving services through their private clinic but, of course, provide on-call emergency support through the Clare Hospital. It is much loved, and this project is really important not just to Clare but to surrounding districts as a hub hospital for the Mid North.

It is not just doctors and nurses who work at the hospital, of course; there are admin staff and we also attract specialists, orthopaedic surgeons and different experts to make sure that people who are living throughout the Clare Valley and beyond have excellent care when they find themselves at the Clare Hospital.

I want to give a particular mention to our Director of Nursing, Jodie Kernick, who has done an extraordinary job to demonstrate leadership not just of the workforce but also as a spokesperson on the Northern Yorke Peninsula Health Advisory Committee (HAC). She is, therefore, a connection and a conduit between the community members and volunteers who are on the committee—that I am also a part of—and, of course, the clinical workforce, so I thank her again. I also thank the working group that established themselves in celebration of the Clare Hospital's 100^th anniversary, which was well attended.

I want to extend further thanks to the outgoing former Chair of the HAC, Darryl Venning, who for many years nursed us through quite complicated operational details that were presented through the health advisory committee. He remains on the committee with us, but we now welcome—after about 12 months of service—Neville Michael, who represents us as the Chair. This HAC is a lively group. We have community members and Councillor Ann Alder on the committee, and we rotate between Snowtown Hospital, Burra Hospital and Clare.

I really do recommend to anyone who has a passing interest in health and wellbeing: you might have a background in business or finance, you might have a background in health or you might have a background in teaching, but to take on an opportunity, a volunteering role, to be on the HAC is to learn a lot about the local health system in your community.

I also want to thank Roger Kirchner, the CEO of Yorke and Northern LHN, who is also ably supported by the Chair, John Voumard. They work well together. Their knowledge of an extensive health network, extending from the Yorke Peninsula and Southern Flinders Upper North area and through to the Mid North is without peer. We are lucky to have them leading us through a difficult and challenging time when it comes to delivering health services in the regions, and I value my interaction with them when it is convenient.

A group that are not often recognised but are very prominent in their contributions in country areas are local donors. There are bequests, donations and even local fundraising events. Even if they were historic, people who live in community areas remember well—and to the dollar almost—the event that they were a part of, the purpose for raising funds. Many have strong memories of strawberry fetes or hospital auxiliary boards, and those moneys are still tied to gift funds and health advisory councils.

I know through the district of my electorate of Frome, extending beyond the HAC that I am a part of, that a lot of very important capital works and purchases of much-needed diagnostic tools, furniture, beds and toilet extensions in some of our aged-care facilities come from bequests, come from deceased estates. It is no small thing when we, as a health advisory committee, are in receipt of such generous donations. There are a number of extensions around the Mid North to our country hospitals that would not have gone ahead without these donations, because the government funds just cannot extend that far. I want to thank every family that has ever contributed to a country hospital in that way.

Belonging to the Lower North HAC, as I have for a number of years now, as a volunteer and then as the local member of parliament, has been a learning curve, and I want to give credit to my committee members who have spent a number of years deliberating this very project. The Clare Hospital Central Sterile Store Department Upgrade Project has been on our mind as a critical upgrade, a critical capital works program, that when completed will unlock further opportunities for our health system and for the Clare Hospital, but it has not come without a cost.

We have had a number of conversations, deliberations and meetings over a couple of years to understand the project, to work with the local health network and the CEO, Roger Kirchner, as I mentioned, the government and SA Health to understand this project and to make sure that it was going to be delivered—not on time now, but in full—and that every step would be taken at the local level to ensure that this project could go ahead.

The barriers to that have indeed been funding. We learned through this project that the obstacles have included not just shifting costs and therefore an adjusting budget—which I will speak to shortly—but also barriers around the tender process, the availability of a trade workforce and perhaps even a disinclination by that workforce to take on a job when there were other metropolitan projects that offered more appeal, according to this report.

The Public Works Committee has received submissions from witnesses who have explained how this project was first contemplated by the former Liberal government and the former health minister, I would argue, the Hon. Stephen Wade, back in 2021. This has a long history, and it is critical, and it is welcome, but the project when it was first imagined sat underneath the $4 million threshold for the Public Works Committee, and so it is only by cost blowout or an increase in the cost of the project that it has made its way here before the committee, and I welcome that because I think we can better understand it.

From under $4 million to a publicised amount of about $4.6 million, to it then requiring a top-up of $1.5 million to get it to $6 million, and now we see that the final project for one room for a sterile store department is $7.2 million is not anything that I am going to complain about as the local member because Clare desperately needs this upgrade, but questions can and will be asked about the increase in cost to capital projects around the state when it comes to regional health services.

The HAC has played an integral part in the costings because we were approached by SA Health informally. The channels flowed through to us: would the HAC release funds to top up this project when we had access to aged-care funds? Funding from the HAC has been released to the tune of $1.5 million. We were asked to approve it. We did. I do not believe it is going to be required, but I think that goes to show how cash-strapped we are in health.

The other infrastructure that relates to this hospital, of course, is the helipad upgrades, which we welcome the government's attention on, but there seems to be some sort of stand-off, certainly for Murray Bridge and Clare where the infrastructure is in place but no helicopters are landing or taking off. I am concerned about the ongoing cost and repair work required at the Clare Aerodrome. I do welcome this report, and I note the report from the Public Works Committee.

Motion carried.