Emergency Departments

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:47): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding health.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Sorry, Mr President—

The PRESIDENT: There is a point of order. Is this a point of order?

The Hon. S.G. WADE: Yes, I object to the Hon. Emily Bourke suggesting that you are offering me protection.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I will protect the integrity of members of this house. I will protect the integrity of this house generally, and I think sometimes some members need to reflect on assisting me in doing that. The Hon. Ms Pnevmatikos has the call.

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS: My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding health. Does the minister think it is acceptable to have 139 patients stuck in our emergency departments waiting for a bed, as was the case yesterday morning? Secondly, why at 12.30pm today were there only 714 out of a possible 812 capacity beds occupied at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, with 34 patients waiting for a bed between 12 to 24 hours?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:49): I thank the honourable member for her question. In relation to the first question—do I think it's acceptable that more than 100 people were waiting in the ED for a bed?—I think the waits that we saw yesterday were unacceptable. Of course there will be, shall we say, waits as people wait for their room to be prepared or the like, but certainly the levels that we were seeing in recent days are unacceptable, and I know that our clinicians do not accept them.

One of the issues leading into this week was that we had a lower level of patient discharges last week than normal. That risk was identified over the weekend, so our management and our clinicians were already having teleconferences on the weekend to try to ease the pressure on the hospitals so that, as we came into the week, we would have more beds available for incoming patients.

In terms of the question the honourable member raised in terms of, I think, the stats as at 12.30 this afternoon, I am certainly happy to seek further information but the fact that there might be people waiting in the ED, and there are beds that are available in the hospital but they are not being transferred to them, may be a matter of transfer timing, but more likely I suspect it's about the specialist bed needs. For example, a person with mental health challenges we would hope to be able to transfer to a specialist mental health bed. Likewise, there are other specialty wards within the hospital, but I am happy to make inquiries.