Economic and Finance Committee: Yorke Peninsula Health Services

Adjourned debate on motion of Mr Hughes:

That the sixth report of the committee, entitled Inquiry into Delivery of Health Services on the Yorke Peninsula, be noted.

(Continued from 30 October 2025.)

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (11:13): I believe I am still on my feet from halfway through my last contribution, so I will finish it off quickly because I want to make sure that my colleague, the member for Narungga, has the opportunity to be able to speak specifically about some of the detail of this important inquiry and report that was done on the delivery of health services on Yorke Peninsula.

Regional people deserve to have a standard of health care that should be expected right across our whole country. We should not be accepting a lower standard of care for those of us who live in regional South Australia just because of convenience. Your postcode should not determine your health outcomes, and that is why this is a really important report that is being put forward.

Coming from the other side of the gulf, from Yorke Peninsula, these problems are magnified even more with the challenges that are faced as far as distance goes, firstly, with getting health professionals to be able to deliver a service. The recruitment and retention of GPs and RNs within regional communities should be a policy focus area for government, no matter what colour, because we know that if those basic services are not delivered into regional communities, especially here in South Australia, the opportunity for sustainable communities to continue will be increasingly difficult.

The health delivery within regional communities is an area that we on this side see as a really important focus area for investment. I urge the government to consider the different aspects of this report, especially when it comes to some of the transportation, some of the specialist care and some of the really important health delivery services, which are delivered through our hospitals and regional South Australia. The important work that this report highlights should form the basis for regional health policy going forward, no matter what type of government is in power.

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (11:15): It is a tremendous honour to rise today to contribute to this, being the culmination of what has been a pretty significant body of work performed by my electorate. To secure almost 11,000 signatures in a discrete area is quite an impressive feat and to be one of the first petitions to achieve that quantum that will trigger an inquiry is a really wonderful effort by my community and it goes to highlight how important an issue it is.

It is something that has been touched on, obviously, just now by the member for Flinders, but it is something that is at the forefront of the minds of possibly every single regional South Australian, the fact that it seems as though our regional health services are declining in an irreversible way and that something needs to be done ASAP to ensure that we can be comfortable living where we live and knowing that we can access the services that we need when we need them.

I would like to start, in the culmination of this report and this inquiry, by thanking my community for getting behind it and ensuring that we got that number of signatures we needed and that we were able to contribute to the inquiry as we did and secure a result that has been laid on the table now, and, of course, in a rather embarrassing faux pas in question time yesterday, the response from government also having been laid on the table. It probably did not necessarily need a question in question time, but we got one nonetheless.

I am pleased, now that we have the response from government, we can see what they intend to do and it will be open for the community to see how they have responded to it. I have had a quick read since yesterday and I note that the government have accepted all the recommendations, which is pleasing; however, I do want to note my initial disappointment that the recommendations were somewhat equivocal as presented by the Economic and Finance Committee. There were quite a few that recommended the government 'consider investment' or 'investigate' or words to that effect, rather than the unequivocal nature of just 'invest in hospitals' and 'invest in our regional health system'.

While I am happy and thankful that the government were able to accept all the recommendations, I wish that they were more certain and that we would just see commitments for new hospitals and improved services. Nonetheless, I will now be doing my level best to ensure that our community achieves the essence of what these recommendations sought to recommend, that they realise that we are in desperate need of improved facilities and better services. That was the essence of the recommendations and not to be 'considering' or 'investigating' or any of those other words that add equivocation to what we need.

I do want to touch on a couple because there were some encouraging responses in there. Firstly—and it has been a major passion of mine—the Wallaroo Hospital is farcically undersized for what we need. It is a 21-bed inpatient hospital for an area that services what I would estimate to be 15,000 or 16,000 people. It is a comically undersized hospital and it really is struggling under the weight of the population it serves.

It is shaping up to be quite a busy summer in that gulf as well. The algal bloom in Gulf St Vincent is risking driving people away from that coastline, and they will, inevitably I am sure, find themselves on the Spencer Gulf side and putting more pressure on our hospital there.

It is pleasing to see in the recommendations that the government have dispatched a strategic infrastructure assessment for the Wallaroo Hospital and that this process will support the infrastructure master plan to establish the case for change and identify preferred development solutions. We know—thanks to the HAC that I am on—that there was an architect there recently who was doing an assessment about whether a refit or a rebuild was the preferred option, and I look forward to seeing whether that information is made public in due course so we can hopefully use that to lobby for the preferred outcome. I also want to touch on another point that is made under recommendation 1:

Radiology services currently provided at Wallaroo Hospital include a seven-day a week after-hours service until 10pm weekdays and between 9am and 10pm on weekends and public holidays. Discussions with the on-site radiology provider are ongoing at Wallaroo Hospital to extend access to CT imaging to the same after-hours availability with a view for emergency access overnight.

This is something that came up in the course of the committee report quite a bit and it is something that I know local GPs consider a life-saving option. People who present to hospital with a stroke and need an urgent CT to determine its severity currently have to head towards Port Pirie to have an emergency CT scan, and if it is then discovered to be potentially life-threateningly serious they will then need to go to Adelaide, which is in the other direction.

So we are looking at a one-hour car ride to Pirie for that CT scan and then a more than two-hour car trip to Adelaide for the treatment if it is required. This, of course, is not quite ideal and it is something that I hope those discussions lead to a result on quite soon. It would be pleasing to see those CT services extended at Wallaroo Hospital in the not too distant future.

We actually had an example in my office only recently when my office manager's grandson was playing basketball and sustained a concussion. He presented to Wallaroo Hospital at 10.15, thereby missing the CT scan that the doctors wanted him to have urgently to investigate whether there was anything dramatically wrong and he had to be airlifted to Adelaide on an RFDS plane for an urgent CT scan. He managed to get that at the women's and kids' hospital some 11 hours after he was recommended for an urgent scan. So thank the Lord there was nothing seriously wrong with him in this instance, but it does highlight the shortcomings of the lack of availability of a CT scan after hours.

Another one I wanted to touch on in the brief time I have available to me is the recommendation from the committee that the government investigate the expansion of CaFHS services to include the southern part of Yorke Peninsula. We have recently had the removal of a CaFHS nurse at Minlaton, which meant that the CaFHS station at Kadina had to cover the entire Yorke Peninsula. I know from having talked to those nurses at Kadina they do not necessarily enjoy having to spend hours upon hours in the car travelling around the entire peninsula looking to conduct their home visits for newborns and that they are finding it quite draining as well.

It is pleasing to read in this response to our petition that CaFHS are exploring options at Yorketown, which would be a wonderful addition, and I will be writing to the minister to follow this up: they are considering whether someone can be based at Yorketown or Minlaton to conduct those home visits from a more local base. I sincerely hope so because it will be of great benefit to new mothers on the southern part of Yorke Peninsula and it will make it far easier for both the Kadina and the Minlaton or Yorketown nurses to conduct their business. I think it will be a wonderful re-addition to our CaFHS system on the peninsula.

Congratulations should go to Katie Hughes and a number of new mothers on the southern part of the peninsula who have been advocating and pushing quite hard over an extended period of time to have that service returned.

There are quite a few other measures in here that I will not have time to touch on. I note one part of recommendation 15, which is about expanding palliative care services, where it is observed that all proposed enhancements will require additional investment. That is to state the bleeding obvious and that is what we are crying out for: additional investment in our regional health system.

I have touched on the Wallaroo Hospital. There is a need for at least an upgrade to the facilities at the Maitland and Yorketown emergency departments. They currently are not operating at an optimum level because it is a bit of a rabbit warren getting patients through the doors and into the emergency system. There is a need, of course, to expand the rural doctors training program, which Dr Ellie Daniel has done an excellent job of instituting and I hope will bear fruit in the not too distant future and she should be congratulated on the work she has done on that front.

But there is a need, as observed in this response, for increased investment in our health system, and I hope the petition itself and the response to it having been tabled now will lead directly to that. It has come at a good time for our constituents as we prepare for an election in March, and I will do my best to ensure that all participants can commit to some of the outcomes in this inquiry.

I sincerely hope, as we roll around into the next term of parliament, that whoever is here representing Narungga can use this report to lobby for better outcomes for our community. Thank you to the committee for conducting the report, thank you to the community for signing the petition and participating in the inquiry, and thank you to the government for providing their response for our community to read and take into account.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (11:25): Thank you to the member for Giles for the work of the committee and thank you to the member for Narungga for not only tabling the petition but organising the entire petition. As a petition that has reached a certain threshold, I have a responsibility not only in terms of responding to the committee report that has been tabled but also in terms of addressing the house in relation to the matter. I checked with the Deputy Clerk that this meets that responsibility. He thinks it does and he is never wrong, so this is my address in response to the tabling of our response to the committee's report into the petition.

Yorke Peninsula is an important area of our state and this is an important area in terms of the delivery of health services for our state. I thank the member for Narungga for his tireless advocacy in terms of improving health services in his local region. The depth of feeling about local health services was shown by not only the number of people who signed and were passionate about the petition but also the people who engaged as part of the committee process. Thank you to all of them for sharing their stories and sharing their passion for local health services.

I think the most important thing when it comes to the delivery of these local health services is the workforce. It is the people who are there to be able to deliver these services, and this has clearly been a significant issue in terms of being able to find the requisite number of health professionals, particularly doctors, to be able to deliver those services on Yorke Peninsula. However, I do believe that there has been a number of very positive developments over the past couple of years that are going to set us up well into the future.

When I became the health minister, only two of our six local health networks had an intern program for new doctors in regional South Australia and now six out of six do. The last of those to come on board was the Yorke and Northern Local Health Network, which only started their intern program this year. They have been successful in recruiting a really excellent doctor to be their Executive Director of Medical Services in Dr Hendrika Meyer. She has not only spearheaded improvements in terms of the medical education that is happening in the region and re-engaged with general practitioners across the region from what was a very broken down relationship between the local health network and local GPs but has also been successful in terms of recruiting extra doctors to the region.

From where we were in terms of Wallaroo Hospital a couple of years ago, where basically the entire coverage of the hospital was being covered by locums, we are now in a much more stable situation in terms of our medical workforce and, as per what my response to the committee report shows, we are seeing a real improvement in terms of the number of doctors that we are recruiting to the region. So I think we are seeing some improvements and I think that there are opportunities to come with things like the single employer model being rolled out across regional South Australia and with additional medical places going to Flinders University for their regional medical school. We can see some bright spots on the horizon there.

Another factor that was raised as part of this report is infrastructure. There is no doubt that right across country South Australia there is a lot of regional infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. We have been doing a lot of work since we have come to government. We have increased exponentially the amount of spending that we are doing in terms of upgrading our regional SA Health infrastructure, but there is no doubt that there is more to do. This report points to that.

Clearly, one of the areas where further investment needs to happen is in terms of Wallaroo Hospital and expanding the space there. Having been to Wallaroo Hospital, as well as all of our country hospitals across the state, it is apparent in terms of the space that we have to deal with that the emergency department does need to expand into the future and we are considering options for that to happen.

Another area I will touch on that the member raised in his remarks is in terms of radiology services. We also agree that we need to expand the hours of operation that we have radiology operating at Wallaroo Hospital. It is not enough hours of operation that we have at the moment, and this is one of those areas of the state that for many years has been contracted out to a private provider to operate. We have not been successful to date in terms of negotiating with them to expand their hours of operation of those services. We are considering what options we might need to take into the future to be able to provide a broader range of hours of operation of radiology services at Wallaroo Hospital.

They are just some of the things: the response that I tabled in parliament yesterday goes through all the recommendations in more detail. I can report to the house that we have accepted all of the recommendations in this report. I want to thank the members from the committee for their work and listening to all the evidence from members of the Yorke Peninsula community. We know that there is more work to do. We are seeing some good progress in terms of our medical workforce, in particular, but we think that the recommendations of this committee report chart a good path forward in terms of improving health services on Yorke Peninsula into the future.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (11:31): I want to repeat what I had to say on the last occasion we discussed this report and I want to put on the record again the work and the advocacy the member for Narungga has done to bring this inquiry about. It was a very positive experience as the Chair of the committee to go out to Yorke Peninsula, to have those meetings in Yorketown, to have those meetings in Wallaroo. Also a real positive is the reasonably timely response on the part of the government to the report. I note the member talks about investigations but that is the only sensible approach you can take. You cannot just, holus-bolus, bowl into it. Work does need to be done but what you have initiated is an incredibly important first step. To see all eight recommendations accepted I think is a really good outcome.

I know there has been some movement on Yorke Peninsula. I remember down at Yorketown on the issue about the availability of GPs, there was a very longstanding GP on Yorke Peninsula. I understand that Country & Outback Health have done some good work and have managed to secure the services of two GPs for Yorketown, so that is a real plus. I want to mention Zieco Skeldon, the CEO of that organisation, and the flexibility and the positive work done there. Also in my electorate, in Quorn, we were facing the prospect of one of those old-time doctors, who gave 24 hours in the community for many, many years, facing retirement. There was a real concern we would not get GPs. Zieco and his organisation secured two GPs for our community, which was above my expectations.

The member for Flinders indicated that postcode should not determine health outcomes. We know that it does. When it comes to regional communities, it is the availability of services and access to services. A recent report has just come out that the survival rates, after five years, for people with cancer in country areas is 13 per cent less than in the city. There are some real issues that need to be addressed. Of course, it is not just a case of distance. We also see in the metropolitan area that postcodes can make a difference. So often, though, in the country it is those socio-economic determinants of health that are incredibly important. Those determinants of health are amplified by distance.

It is also amplified by a change, in some respects, in culture and the sort of lifestyle that people want. I am old enough to remember when we had a whole range of specialists who actually lived in your community. I will not list them all, but it was a broad spectrum of specialists. Even in major regional communities these days, that is not common at all. There has been that fundamental shift, but that shift has occurred across, if you like, the professional strata as a whole, when it comes to that willingness to live and work and be part of a country community. There are complex issues there, but we should not give up on addressing those issues.

The member mentioned the decline over years in country health services. I would not put it as strongly as that. I have seen some real improvements and I have seen, in other areas, a decline. There is a whole raft of services in my region, which is a big country region, that did not exist in the past. This is in some of our larger regional hospitals. Oncology services were not available in the past and people had to go down to Adelaide for chemotherapy, so there have been improvements in that. There has been an expansion of dialysis services, so that is a real plus; and in some of our hospital settings there are mental health services.

Motion carried.