Mental Health Review

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:23): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier consider it acceptable for mental health patients to be stuck in hospital EDs? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: It was reported in the Sunday Mail that a mental health patient was stuck in a hospital ED for five nights, believed to be a national record unfortunately.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:24): No, and that is exactly why we are implementing the policy response that we are doing. Of course, we would have loved to have clicked our fingers and had 100 extra mental health beds open up overnight, but it has taken time to design. We have done that in conjunction with people with lived experience. We have done that in conjunction with clinicians and now we are seeing these projects open.

As the Premier said, in the past few months we have seen a new mental health rehabilitation ward open at the QEH—24 additional beds there. On the weekend, we saw the opening of 24 additional mental health rehabilitation beds at Noarlunga Hospital. Within months, we will see a third one of these additional new capacities coming into the system at Modbury.

There will be three new additional mental health rehabilitation wards, extra capacity and a new model of care to make sure that we do not have a revolving door for people in mental health acute crisis, that we are not giving people back to the community before they are well, that we are giving them the tools and the treatment that they need to get better and to not re-present to our emergency departments.

This is what was advised to us by the college of psychiatrists and by the College for Emergency Medicine, endorsed by them as one of the key responses that we need to do in terms of the entire ramping crisis, and particularly the impact that this has on people with mental health in our system.

Of course, that's not all that we are doing. We are also expanding mental health at Flinders Medical Centre. Twelve additional beds going into the Margaret Tobin Centre will open within months to provide additional acute capacity for the system, which is much needed as well. We are also building a new centre opposite Lyell McEwin Hospital, with 16 beds there in a crisis stabilisation unit to help people avoid having to go to the hospital entirely. They will be able to go to the Medicare Mental Health Centre, which will be co-located with the Crisis Stabilisation Centre, and get their treatment there.

In addition, as part of the new Mount Barker Hospital, which I know the member for Kavel is particularly excited about, this will have our first ever mental health capacity in the Adelaide Hills—12 mental health beds going into the Adelaide Hills. Within months, we will see the opening of the new mental health step-down unit at Mount Gambier, understanding the need in that community for mental health services and trying to reduce the impact on the rest of the hospital there and also we do not want to see people having to come to Adelaide for that treatment. There is also additional mental health capacity to come in the new Women's and Children's Hospital.

We have a huge suite of different investments that we are making. As the Premier said, the response that we have in terms of ramping has been commended and endorsed by the Coroner in his report as extremely comprehensive and well thought through, but the key part of that we have made from the beginning is an overemphasis on mental health investment, because we are concerned about people who get stuck in an emergency department bed waiting for a mental health inpatient bed when those beds are full and we do not have enough capacity.

Over many decades and over both sides of parties in government, we have seen a reduction in mental health capacity in our state and we are turning that around now. We are doing that as fast as we can and we are seeing that happen right now. Forty eight of those beds are already open with additional ones to come. Of course, it is not just the hospital system that we are investing in, we are also investing in the community. One of those features is the work that we are doing with the co-responder model between police and our mental health system so people can get that care through those health clinicians without coming to emergency departments.