Royal Adelaide Hospital Outpatient Medical Imaging

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:31): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement about the Royal Adelaide Hospital outpatient medical imaging.

Leave granted.

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS: I rise to inform the council that, following a testing of the market, the government will keep the provision of outpatient medical imaging services at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in-house. By way of background, earlier this year SA Health commissioned KPMG to provide a report on the different options available for managing an expanded outpatient radiology service at the new hospital. This report considered the merits of either keeping the service in-house or entering into a contract with an external provider.

In June 2017, SA Health released the report and announced that it would consult with staff, unions and other stakeholders. At the same time, an invitation to supply was issued to test the market and confirm whether there was interest from private providers in undertaking this work. Several private radiology providers responded to this invitation; however, none of the submissions would deliver the full suite of radiology services as outlined in the specification document, including the vital role of training and supervising radiology registrars at no additional cost to SA Health.

At the same time, a submission was received from the radiologists who currently work at the RAH, which set out a model for keeping the service in-house. Since then, SA Health has been in close discussions with the radiologists and is confident that their submission represents the optimal model for delivering this service.

As a result of the review of outpatient medical imaging at the RAH conducted by the government, we will now have an expanded service that will nearly double the amount of activity to around 50,000 exams a year, such as X-rays, CT scans and MRIs. At the same time, the new model is cost-effective and maximises the revenue received by SA Health, while ensuring that staff are not affected. In fact, additional nurses have already been recruited and additional radiographers will be needed to operate the service.

This is an excellent outcome for staff, who will be able to grow the service they currently provide. This is an excellent outcome for taxpayers, who can be confident that the government has diligently ensured that the model for the RAH’s outpatient imaging represents the best use of public resources. However, most importantly, it is an excellent outcome for patients, who will have much greater access to a world-class service in a state-of-the-art facility, meaning far fewer patients will be referred to the private sector for outpatient radiology appointments.

The new hospital differs from the old site in that it has separate medical imaging equipment for the emergency department, inpatients and outpatients, whereas previously these three different radiology services were all conducted using the same equipment. The separation of these services at the new site means that the amount of outpatient imaging performed at the hospital can be significantly expanded as the equipment will not need to be prioritised for the emergency department or inpatients.

There was a range of factors that needed to be fully considered before any changes could be made to the model used at the old RAH site, including quality and safety, cost effectiveness and education and training. I am very pleased to announce that this service will be kept in-house and that SA Health is very confident that the public sector staff will deliver a top quality, expanded outpatient service now and into the future.