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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-07 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:51): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister now admit that not all of the services currently provided at the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital will be delivered at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and that some of these services will be delivered at a lower level?

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) (14:51): Madam Speaker, the member uses the term will I 'now admit', which I would have suggested is an argumentative way of putting a question. It shows how disorderly this opposition is when it comes to this matter. They have opposed every single stage of the development of this new Royal Adelaide Hospital, as everybody else is getting on board except them and their camp followers.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: They are being left alone, like a shag on a rock, when it comes to this Royal Adelaide Hospital. Let me go through it again. The inpatient facilities in this new hospital will be 30 per cent greater than at the existing hospital. If you would like me to go through it line by line, I am happy to deal with it.

The outpatient facilities will be greater. There are 108 cubicles at the existing Royal Adelaide Hospital for outpatient services and there will be 132 cubicles at the new hospital. So there is an increase in capacity.

All of the existing inpatient services at the hospital will be continued, I am advised, and, of course, in relation to outpatient services, we are going through a process of making sure that we put outpatient services where they best belong. That's why—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Madam Speaker, once again, the opposition leader interjects when I am trying to speak, and others on the other side interject. They ask a question and, when you try to give a serious answer, they just want to play word games. What I am trying to say to the members opposite is a serious answer to the question. The vast majority of services will be transferred over. There are some services across the whole system that we are looking to put in our GP Plus healthcare clinics. For example, in the northern suburbs at the Elizabeth GP Plus clinic we are looking at putting—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: In the northern suburbs at the Elizabeth GP Plus clinic, for example, we are looking at putting a whole range of outpatient services there so that patients do not have to go to the hospital. There is a whole range of things that you need to get attention for that you do not need to go to a hospital for. Obviously, we worked this through with the clinicians because there are issues to do with teaching, division of time and resources, and so on, so we want to do this in an effective way.

But, we are not going to be constrained by some sort of artificial notion that whatever used to happen at one stage has to happen automatically in the same way in the future. We need to reform our healthcare system, and an absolutely fundamental part of that reform is putting more services closer to where people live. I want to put some of the services from the Royal Adelaide Hospital out at Modbury and at Lyell McEwin so that patients in that part of the world do not have to travel to Adelaide to get assistance. Of course, there is a bit of resistance to doing that because the people who provide those services do not want to do the travelling.

We will work through these issues appropriately, but this hospital will have more inpatient services, it will have more outpatient services, it will be a bigger hospital, providing 30 per cent more capacity for the people of the state. We need that extra capacity because, as the population ages, the demand for healthcare services are going up. We do not put all of our services in hospitals, of course. We put them in GP Plus healthcare centres, which creates greater capacity in the hospitals for doing the things that can only be done in hospitals.

What the opposition is saying, of course, is that they do not have a healthcare plan: all they do is to respond to the pandering of those who support them.

The SPEAKER: Order! Point of order.

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister is debating. The opposition did not say that at all.

The SPEAKER: Order! Sit down. I uphold your point of order. I think that the minister has finished his reply. The member for Morphett.

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