Question Time

National Emergency Access Target

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (16:31): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the minister representing the Minister for Health questions relating to the future super emergency departments.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: The National Emergency Access Target was agreed to by COAG in 2011. This is a target whereby regular reporting highlights the performance of public hospital emergency departments against an agreed standard for that specified year. The National Health Authority update on hospital performance released mid-2014 showed that, in 2013, 50 to 53 per cent of patients admitted to the Flinders Medical Centre, Lyell McEwin and the RAH left within the four-hour period mandated under the National Emergency Access Target. This is substantially lower than our emergency access target for the calendar year of 2014, the target being 82 per cent.

The target for 2015 is to have 90 per cent of all presentations to the emergency department, and I reiterate that at the moment, according to the latest data, we are achieving something like 50 to 53 per cent. My questions are:

1. What is the government doing to ensure that there are appropriate staffing levels of these new super EDs, so called, in advance of the proposed changes so that patients' health is not compromised in any way?

2. What practical steps is the government taking to ensure that all emergency departments, particularly the three which are proposed to become super ED hospitals, are able to meet the National Emergency Access Target, given that we are so far below them at the moment?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (16:33): I thank the honourable member for his most important questions about emergency departments. I just remark that the national targets he refers to, set in 2011, of course were set prior to the billions and billions of dollars ripped out of the health system by the federal Abbott government.

The Minister for Health in this state has made it plain, all the way through his discussions about Transforming Health, that his desire primarily to return to a position of quality services being delivered across a number of hospitals and, where the expertise can be brought bear, to have around-the-clock emergency services provided is all about quality and all about service provisions: are they going to return a better health system for our citizens?

I undertake to take the other questions the honourable member asked of me to the minister in the other place and to seek a response on his behalf.