Emergency Departments

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:40): By way of supplementary question: the minister mentioned that measures in the plan were temporary measures. Could I ask him to reflect on that, whether it is the intention of the government that all measures in the plan be temporary; for example, ambulances only to attend urgent cases, RDNS to provide in-home support for some patients, direct admission to emergency department, and criteria nurse-led discharge. Are these temporary measures?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:40): To the best of my knowledge none of those measures have been announced as being a permanent change in policy with regard to health, vis-a-vis, therefore, they are not of a permanent nature and I think they would be characterised as being of a temporary nature. Having said that, we are going to see what learnings we get out of this.

As the pressure subsides, as we reasonably expect it should at some point—as I mentioned before, there is a seasonal nature to the way ED presentations occur—that will provide an opportunity for us to take advice and reflect on how these changes have operated, with a view to seeing whether some should be of a more permanent nature. We will wait and see; we have to see what the reflections are of our clinicians and everybody else working within the sector. As it stands, to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a commitment that these arrangements are permanent in nature, but nevertheless they may well become permanent in nature if it appears that they would represent good public policy.

I am in the early stages of holding this responsibility. I am not going to get into the business of starting to rule things in or out unnecessarily. We want to make sure that we can improve the system and, if this crisis provides an opportunity for us to get some learnings out of it so that we can improve the system on a more permanent basis, then so be it.