Answers to Questions

Spinal Cord Injury Service

In reply to the Hon. K.L. VINCENT (22 September 2015).

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change): The Minister for Health has received this advice:

Transforming Health is the result of comprehensive consultation that began in mid-2014 with the establishment of three Clinical Advisory Committees who developed 284 clinical standards of care and six quality principles that underpin all decisions about the transformation of our health system.

Transforming Health aims to provide services closer to where people live, when safe to do so, ensuring the clinical and quality standards are met.

Clinical evidence tells us rehabilitation is most successful when it starts as soon as patients are ready, even when they are still recovering in an acute setting, which is why we are integrating rehabilitation into hospitals.

Stand-alone rehabilitation facilities can only provide rehabilitation care to people who are medically stable and cannot provide the medical specialty care needed to manage a person's condition. This can mean delays to starting treatment, a longer time before patients can return home, as well as slower recovery and poorer health outcomes.

When rehabilitation is delayed, patients can decondition quickly in hospital. This can lead to longer than expected hospital stays, as well as increased likelihood of infection and mental illness.

It is therefore important to get patients mobile sooner, through early and active rehabilitation within our hospitals. Relocating rehabilitation services to acute hospital settings also reduces the need for patient transfers.

Between December 2015 and June 2016 the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) chaired a weekly forum with clinicians based at Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre (Hampstead) and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital (TQEH) about these reforms. She has also made several visits to specialty areas, convened some user groups, multidisciplinary workshops and open staff forums as well as met with some advocacy groups and other stakeholders.

A series of potential options meeting the Transforming Health requirements for the service relocations have been made available to all staff for their input before proposals for formal consultation are prepared. Further engagement with service users about options will be needed to ensure that options for formal consultation best meet the needs of patients, their families and clinical teams.

A number of User Groups, consisting of multi-disciplinary clinicians and consumer representatives, were established by CALHN earlier in 2015 to guide and advise the project team and architects in the design and refurbishment of rehabilitation services at TQEH, however this process was put on hold so that further engagement could occur.

CALHN intends to recommence the User Group process, and formal consultation will occur following the current engagement processes being undertaken by the CEO, CALHN.

Construction work planned at TQEH at the start of 2016 remains on hold, while these processes continue.

In addition to current funding for the move of rehabilitation services to TQEH, TQEH Stage 1 and 2 redevelopments ($127 million) provided new inpatient bed facilities and some allied therapy spaces that will be utilised in the provision of rehabilitation services relocated from Hampstead.