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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-09 Daily Xml
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PATIENT SAFETY REPORTS

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:22): My question is to the Minister for Health. In the 2009-10 year, how many patients died after falling, and how many required surgical repair for fractures of the hip or skull after falling in our public hospitals? The 2009-10 Patient Safety Report shows the number of patients who had falls in our public hospitals rose to 7,401, whereas in the 2008-09 report, serious falls were also itemised to reveal nine deaths, 20 broken hips and a fractured skull. The 2009-10 report does not detail these serious outcomes.

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) (14:23): I am absolutely disappointed that the member for Morphett did not ask me this question yesterday. As it happened, I had a Dorothy Dixer prepared on this very topic and, sadly, it has been removed from my file. So the detail—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: The detail which I would have been absolutely pleased to provide to the member is no longer with me, but I will get it back. I acknowledge that falls is one of the number of issues in hospitals—other than the issue that causes people to go into hospital—that we have to address. Infection control, of course, is one of the major issues, but falling is also one of the major issues, and the member raises it appropriately as an important matter. That's why I—

The Hon. P.F. Conlon interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I wonder if the Minister for Transport would let me complete this answer all by myself. That would be nice. I always—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: —appreciate his assistance. He is an insightful and intuitive person when it comes to these matters and, indeed, all matters.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: You be careful there. But falls in hospitals are a very big issue, as the member would understand. Part of that is about the design of the hospital; that is why one of the very important reasons to build a new Royal Adelaide Hospital with their own single rooms—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: This is an absolutely serious point that I make: we are designing the single rooms at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital to make—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Look, it is easy to trivialise things, but the new hospital's bedrooms will be designed—and all of the new bedrooms in all of our redevelopments across country and city will be designed—to minimise the chances of people falling. (I knew if I talked long enough they would arrive.) The new bedroom in the Royal Adelaide Hospital, for example, will have the bed in an orientation towards the bathroom so that when the patient gets out of the ward there will be a rail connecting the bed all the way through to the bathroom, minimising the chance. My wife was recently in hospital having some procedure done and she was in a single room—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It was a private hospital. We paid for it ourselves. She was in a single—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I imagine if I had just said it was in a public hospital, they would have said, 'Why didn't you have it in a private hospital?'

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I am happy to have a system where people who wish to pay for private health can have it, and I certainly support the private system that consumers pay for. We paid for it. She was in a room, and the bathroom was some way across, and there was no way for her to get to the bathroom by holding onto anything. It was an open space which she had to traverse. If she were elderly and it was in the middle of the night the risk of a fall would be much greater. So designing a bedroom around a patient's needs to reduce that rate of falling is very important.

However, I can give further advice to the house. A snapshot study, for example, of 181 clients of the Falls Prevention Program between January 2009 and December 2010 showed that there had been a 55 per cent reduction in ambulance call-outs to falls, an 80 per cent reduction in ambulance transports and emergency department presentations, a 70 per cent reduction in hospital admissions, and a 50 per cent reduction in bed days for a falls-related injury, comparing the data before and after the program's introduction. This is the SA Health's Falls Prevention Program and that—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: It has a lot to do with the question: it was about falls. This equates to a $900,000 saving to the health system and an estimated 88 fewer trips to hospital for the cohort in this risk group across the period of the snapshot study. We have a Falls Prevention Program focus in South Australia and of course there are falls assessment clinics, which are a key part of the program, to provide multidisciplinary assessment and management for older people with complex falls-related presentations. Based upon a client's assessed clinical needs, a range of services may be organised for them, such as medical—

Mrs REDMOND: Point of order, Madam Speaker: the relevance. The minister is talking about something entirely unrelated to the question, which was about the deaths and surgeries which had to be performed as a result of falls in hospitals.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister, have you finished your answer, or are you going to resume your answer? I will listen very carefully.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: Madam Speaker, I was making the point that we are actually—

The Hon. P.F. Conlon interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, Minister for Transport!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: We have programs that can help. I was making the point that we actually have a falls prevention strategy in place, and we are doing a lot to try to ensure that people who are subject to falls are helped and that, of course, takes pressure off people who end up in the hospital system. I am happy to get a more complete answer for the member if he is not happy with this general information that I am able to provide. I can provide an answer to the first question asked by the Leader of the Opposition: my advice is we have spent $21.555 million to date.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

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