Women's and Children's Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the care of any children be compromised as a result of the relocation of the Women's and Children's Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: It was reported in The Advertiser that the Women's and Children's Hospital's troubled Paediatric Intensive Care Unit will shut for at least three months and that staff will have to make do in a new location with fewer beds.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:24): I am very happy to outline this very important project, why it is necessary and what is being done to make sure that we can continue to provide excellent care for the sickest children of this state.

The paediatric intensive care unit at the Women's and Children's Hospital is a vital service for this state. It's the only intensive care unit for the sickest children in this state. For some time, for many years, there have been issues in terms of the infrastructure of that unit. It came to a head in the past couple of years when the College of Intensive Care Medicine raised concerns about it, despite original warnings being made back in 2018 by the college about the unit's condition and infrastructure works that needed to happen.

So we have embarked on—and the Treasurer has allocated the funds to undertake—a substantial redevelopment of that unit, including an expansion of the number of beds that will be part of that unit. It's a $20 million investment that will deliver an upgraded intensive care unit and three new PICU beds, increasing from 13 to 16 beds. It will provide centralised single equipment storage and larger, improved staff and patient amenities as well.

Careful planning has been occurring with the staff, with the teams, to make sure that while these vital redevelopment works occur they are going to be done in a way that makes sure we can provide care for the sickest children in this state. The works are being conducted in a staged approach, including the temporary relocation of the intensive care unit which is due to occur later this year. That, of course, is essential for those works to be able to happen.

It will be established within the medical day unit over the Christmas period, identified as the optimal time to relocate the service and reduce disruption. Obviously, Christmas periods in hospitals tend to involve fewer elective surgery operations taking place and are often times in which we will seek to undertake works. This will allow not only the existing 10 beds to be in the medical unit but also an overflow area of an additional four beds on top of that.

At no stage will there be any closure of the intensive care unit; this is a temporary relocation of that to allow those upgrades to occur. The medical day unit, which will then be displaced, will be operated from the short stay medical ward during this time. Very importantly, this is all being done to make sure we can continue to provide high-quality care to patients right through that redevelopment.

I thank the Treasurer for allocating the funds for this project—these are really important works—and I thank the staff of the intensive care unit. Over my time as the minister I have met a number of the doctors and nurses who work in that intensive care unit, and you could not find a more committed workforce for their patients than those who work in PICU. I know that they have been very heavily engaged in terms of the design, delivery and implementation of how these upgrades are going to occur, and it is ultimately going to give them the facilities that they need to be able to provide this care for the sickest children of our state.