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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-03-08 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL ELECTIVE SURGERY

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:56): Again, my question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister confirm that non-life-threatening emergencies, such as broken limbs, are being delayed at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to allow extra elective surgery procedures to be undertaken to meet government targets?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:56): I am not aware of any limbs that are not being set because of other pressures but I will happily have a look at the particulars of the example given. Let me explain the way the system works. Essentially, our major or acute hospitals have two kinds of pressures—one is through the emergency department and that, in the case of some hospitals, is 80 per cent plus of the activity that occurs there—and we also try to make sure that people are not kept waiting for elective surgery.

Elective surgery is not elective in one sense but it is planned surgery so it is a surgical procedure which is planned. There are targets set for various levels of acuity so that people who have a particular surgical need should be operated on within a particular time frame. We need to meet those targets just as we need to meet the emergency department targets. Of course, from time to time, there is a compression when the capacity of the hospital is at its limit. When that happens decisions are made about whether elective surgery is deferred or some other arrangements are put in place. Occasionally, we have gone out to the private sector to do some of that elective surgical work.

However, at all times it is about trying to make sure that the patients are given the procedure they need in the appropriate time frame. That is a judgment made every day by the managers, doctors and nurses in our hospitals when they are dealing with the lists of people before them. To say that we should delay elective surgery in order for emergency surgery to occur would be to say that somebody who has been on a list and who is in the theatre primed for operation should be delayed so that somebody who has come in through the emergency department who does not need the surgery at that moment should get priority is a judgment that only doctors can make. It is certainly not a judgment that I would make.

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