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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-09-22 Daily Xml
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HEALTH SERVICES

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (15:33): My question is for the Minister for Health. How many additional nurses and doctors have been recruited to improve health services for South Australians?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:33): As members would know and as they have heard me say in the past, as our population ages, it puts enormous pressure on our health system. That pressure is felt now and it will become more intense over the years to come.

In fact, that pressure will be there until about 2040 so we have about 30-odd years where we are going to have an ageing population to which we have to provide services. We need to do two things primarily. Firstly, we have to reduce demand and, secondly, we have to increase supply. In terms of reducing demand, we have to put a much greater emphasis on primary health care, prevention, chronic disease management and out of hospital services, and we are investing enormous amounts of money in that area.

Secondly, we have to increase the amount of supply, because even if we reduce demand we will still have more people turning up to our hospitals requiring services. We need to do that in two ways. Firstly, we need to make sure that the resources that we put in to the health service are used as efficiently and as wisely as possible. We need to get as much bang as possible out of every buck that we put in, and we are doing a lot to improve the efficiency of the system, and, secondly, of course, we need to put in extra supply: extra doctors, nurses and allied health workers.

I can inform the house that since 2002 we have employed a net additional 1,074 doctors, a net additional 3,692 nurses and midwives and a net additional 931 allied health workers. That works out at an increase of approximately 50 per cent in the number of additional doctors, an increase of approximately 50 per cent in the number of additional allied health workers and an increase of about 30 per cent of additional nurses and midwives.

Now, that is people, individuals, but if we put it into the full time equivalent, those figures work out at 766 additional full time equivalent doctors, 2,738 additional full time equivalent nurses and 740 additional full time equivalent allied health workers. So, however you measure it, whether it is full time or in terms of the individuals, in percentage terms, in absolute terms, it is an enormously large contribution that this government has made over the last 7½ years to the expenditure in health.

When this government came to office the expenditure on health was just over $2 billion a year. We are now putting $4.1 billion a year into the public health system: the recurrent cost of the provision of the public health system.

In relation to doctors, we now have 3,255 doctors in our public health system, as at 30 June of this year, which is an increase of 172 over the previous year. We also have, as of that date, 2,855 allied health workers, an increase of 153 on last year, including, amongst others, physiotherapists, pharmacists, sonographers, speech pathologists and psychologists.

Importantly, we have 14,668 nurses and midwives, which is an additional 809 over the last 12 months. I am pleased to tell members from the southern suburbs that 171 of those have been employed at the Flinders Medical Centre. The members for Florey and Newland, and the member for Torrens, who asked the question, will be pleased to know that we have employed an extra 31 nurses at the Modbury Hospital. We have now employed 41 extra nurses at the Modbury Hospital since it was brought back into government hands.

Because nurses and midwives play such an important role in helping to shape our health system, the government has undertaken a number of significant professional programs for attracting and retaining nurses and midwives. We are aiming to create a wider variety of nursing and midwifery positions: more child health nurses, more nurses and midwives visiting new mothers at home and more nurse practitioners to create a career structure for nurses.

Developing the role of nurse practitioners is important because it ensures that we make the most efficient use of our existing workforce. We already have 28 nurse practitioners working in the South Australian health system across a number of areas, including: emergency, neonatology, palliative care, mental health, orthopaedics and aged care. Since September 2007, 10 nurse practitioners have also gained the authority to prescribe medicines.

The role of nurse practitioner is becoming more important here, and around Australia. The federal health minister, Nicola Roxon, has recently given her support to further advance this nursing-led model of care. In addition to employing a record number of staff, this government is undertaking an ambitious program of hospital renewal that will increase the capacity of our hospitals by modernising facilities.

Since we have been in government we have increased the number of beds in our metropolitan hospitals by 200 plus, and with the development works in train we are also on line to put another 250 or so beds into our system.

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