Central Adelaide Local Health Network Whistleblower Hotline

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:17): Will incentives be offered for people to come forward?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:17): I'm not aware of any proposals to provide incentives, but I think we need to appreciate the breadth of this hotline. Certainly, it is talking about calling out bad behaviour; it is also talking about highlighting bad practices. For example, I was talking to a nurse yesterday afternoon, or it might have been yesterday morning, in relation to his attempts to try to improve the orthopaedic pathway for patients. He expressed his frustration about the fractionalisation of the workforce, and that was a specific issue that has been highlighted by KordaMentha.

If you have a medical workforce, in particular, where people are working relatively low fractions of an FTE, the nurse was saying to me that it is hard to get consistency in the model of care. He was suggesting to me that one surgeon might only be in the unit one day a month—actually, I shouldn't say one day a month. He said he might only be in once a month; he didn't actually say how long that block of time might be.

The Hon. C.M. Scriven: So what's the fact of the matter?

The Hon. S.G. WADE: I am addressing Mr Pangallo's question at the moment. In that regard, I just stress that my understanding is that the hotline is not just for bullying, intimidation or poor culture, it is also about poor practice. We want to collect as much data, if you like, to drive good performance. In a situation like that, someone who isn't in a managerial role might have very good line of sight of opportunities to improve patient care and improve sustainability, insights that may not be as readily available to people in senior positions.