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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-23 Daily Xml
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HOSPITAL DEMAND

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (14:56): Thank you, Madam Speaker; 35.9 hours, John.

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Morphett!

Dr McFETRIDGE: My question is to the Minister for Health. Which other public hospitals have adopted the Flinders Medical Centre policy as of 31 May 2011 to use treatment rooms for ward patients, given that at 11am today, four hours ago, the Lyell McEwin was overcrowded at 101 per cent capacity, the Flinders Medical Centre was at 102 per cent capacity, the Noarlunga hospital was at 110 per cent capacity and the Royal Adelaide Hospital was at 113 per cent capacity—four hours ago, John?

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) (14:57): 'Four hours ago, John.' Well, look, breaking news to the member for—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Dr McFetridge interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Morphett, behave.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: As I have said frequently, the emergency departments in our hospitals are under a lot of pressure at the moment, there is no doubting that at all, and we are going through a range of processes to relieve that pressure. The substantial thing we are doing, of course, is to increase the capacity of our emergency departments at Flinders, Lyell McEwin, TQEH, and of course building a new Royal Adelaide Hospital, which will have a lot more capacity. Of course, they objected to that, so their solution is to not do anything except build a big building in the driveway of the—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Norwood, you are warned.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: I don't know what he said anyway; it just sounds loud to me. So, we are going through a process of building extra capacity and putting extra capacity out of our hospitals so fewer people have to go to the emergency departments, and the performance across the board in health in South Australia is improving. That is not to say at some times—and particularly at the moment—there is a lot of pressure on the emergency departments, and we do everything we can. We put on extra staff, we put in extra resources, but, after we build that extra capacity and build the extra out-of-hospital capacity, there will still be pressures. I have never said that that was not the case, but we have a strategy to address all of these issues and I am very, very confident that we will get there.

From time to time hospitals do flex up beds, and that means using beds which might be ascribed to another purpose, so treatment rooms from time to time are used, and that is perfectly normal and perfectly reasonable. If you have too many people coming through the door, you have to do something; you cannot turn people away. I have absolute confidence in the managers of our hospitals and the staff who work in our hospitals to manage all of these things in a professional way.

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