Hospital Beds

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (15:08): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding hospital demand.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: This council will know of my advocacy for care in the community, whether in mental health and suicide prevention specifically or in health more generally. Will the minister update the council on programs to ease pressure on our hospitals?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:09): I thank the honourable member for his question. The member is right to raise the positive outcomes associated with community-based programs. Delivering health care in the community is increasingly a focus of public health systems. Care in the community provides better outcomes for patients, who usually prefer to be treated in their own home, in familiar surroundings and with the support of their family and loved ones. It also provides better outcomes for the health system, freeing up acute hospital beds for patients who require that heightened level of supervision and care and consequently allowing for the provision of health services more efficiently and at a lower cost to the taxpayer.

One pilot program which has already shown significant benefits is a collaboration between the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network and the community health group Pop-Up. The project provides support to GPs and community services to care for patients in the community so that they don't need to present to emergency departments. Patients being cared for in the community have recently presented to either the Lyell McEwin or the Modbury Hospital emergency departments.

The pilot has been extremely successful to date, with 66 people already being provided care—that was the latest figure available to me. This number is expected to rise to 100 by the end of the project. That's potentially 100 fewer ambulance trips and presentations to NALHN emergency departments and fewer acute beds being used. NALHN's partner, Pop-Up, will provide a GP for patients who don't have one themselves. The pilot ties into work already being done to support care in the community, provided as Hospital in the Home. In 2017, in NALHN, this program provided more than 2,000 episodes of care and is estimated to have saved 15,000 bed days. This is about the whole of the health system working together to support people before they get so unwell that they need to present to an emergency department.

These are only some of the range of initiatives the government has introduced to ease demand on the system and stop the ramping, which is the legacy of Labor's disastrous Transforming Health experiment. We know there was no panacea to address this complex problem. We are undertaking a range of initiatives. In addition to piloting care in the community, we have secured 40 beds at the Repat. We have launched a new criteria-led discharge policy. We have opened 10 PICU beds at the RAH. We have launched the ED Geriatric Syndromes 80 Plus initiative in CALHN, and we have committed to opening an additional 10 forensic mental health beds.

The Marshall Liberal government is continuing to undo the damage of Transforming Health, whether it is reactivating the Repat, reintroducing multiday surgery at the Modbury Hospital, opening new mental health beds at the RAH or reintroducing 24/7 cardiac services at The QEH. While Labor does its best to stop us fixing the train wreck of Transforming Health, the Marshall Liberal government is getting on with the job.