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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-07-26 Daily Xml
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HOSPITAL INFORMATION DASHBOARD

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:17): My question is to the Minister for Health. What measures have been taken to increase the capacity of the South Australian health system, and how will the display of real-time information about the number of patients in Adelaide's hospitals make our health system more transparent?

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) (15:18): I thank the member for Florey for her question, and I acknowledge her very strong interest in health matters, particularly those related to the Modbury Hospital. There are other hospitals, I would inform the member for Florey, but she does know about the Modbury Hospital.

Today, I am very pleased to announce that the operational business intelligence (known as OBI), the dashboard for inpatient beds, is now available on the SA Health website—that is the OBI for inpatient beds. The inpatient dashboard data will be updated, from now on, every half hour and it includes information on how many patients are in our metropolitan hospitals and how many beds are available at any given time in each of our hospitals. As I say, information is available for each hospital, and even for each area or clinical unit within each hospital, such as, for example, the cancer centre or critical care. No other state, I am told, provides this level of detail nor updates the information as regularly.

The dashboard also includes information on the average length of stay in each of the hospitals and inpatient flows. This information has been used internally by hospital managers and healthcare providers for some time to better manage patient flows and to ensure that all demand is met. The information is now available to the general public along with the emergency department dashboard that went live on 30 June this year.

The emergency department dashboard had 16,319 page views from the time of its launch to Monday 21 July, with an average time on the page of five minutes and 48 seconds, which is an indication of a high level of interest and a high use by those who are interested in health statistics. The inpatient dashboard data shows that demand fluctuates, as you would expect. However, thanks to the extra capacity that we are building into the system and the hard work of doctors, nurses and hospital administrators, this demand is always met. No-one is ever refused the medical care they need in a public hospital in our state.

We know that as our population gets older we will require more health care. We are preparing for this future demand by increasing capacity by redeveloping every single metropolitan hospital and building the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. We are also working with some success to slow the growth in demand for hospital services.

In terms of increasing capacity, we have now added over 200 beds to the metropolitan system since coming to government and we have about another 250 beds to be delivered by projects that are currently underway. This year's budget provides $497.8 million for health infrastructure. This is an unprecedented level and an increase of $362.1 million on the 2005-06 budget, or 267 per cent. We also have record numbers of nurses and doctors.

In addition to creating extra capacity, we are having some success in slowing the growth in demand. In 2006-07, the year before the launch of our healthcare plan, emergency department presentations grew in that one year by 5.9 per cent. This was on the back of a 5.5 per cent growth in the previous year. Every year since our healthcare plan has come into place, other than for a spike with swine flu in 2009-10, the rate of growth has slowed. This year to date, up to the end of May, it has been below 3 per cent.

In terms of inpatient activity, the last four to six weeks have been very busy for our metropolitan hospitals, especially the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the Lyell McEwin Hospital. However, the long-term trend reflects the same slowing in growth as the emergency department figures show. In 2006-07, metropolitan hospital separations grew by 4.6 per cent. In the years since, the growth in separations has slowed year on year to 3.3 per cent, 2.1 per cent and 1.9 per cent. Last financial year, to the end of May, the figure in metropolitan Adelaide was down to 0.1 per cent. In 2006-07, it was 4.6 per cent growth; this year, it was just 1 per cent flat growth.

South Australia is leading the country in reducing hospital demand, despite the fact that we have the oldest population. We are increasing capacity, we are slowing the growth in demand and we are also improving services, as measured in a key range of statistics. In the year to May, 71.2 per cent of emergency department patients were seen within clinically recommended times. This is an improvement of 4.3 per cent on last year and builds on improvements every year over the past three years.

We have also improved our position compared to other states in timeliness of elective surgery every year for the past four years for the median waiting time for elective surgery, which is now 36 days. We also have the least number of patients in the nation who have waited more than a year for their procedure. Whilst we are always striving to make further improvements to our healthcare system, we are very proud of what has been achieved to date. By displaying a level of real-time information online that is in excess of any other state in the country, we are making the healthcare system transparent and accountable to the people of South Australia. It is my hope that this transparency will improve the public understanding of the healthcare system and help to drive further improvements.

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