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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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PUBLIC HOSPITAL STATISTICS

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (14:46): My question is also to the Minister for Health and Ageing. How have South Australian public hospitals performed in the latest Australian hospital statistics on emergency department care and elective surgery waiting times?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts) (14:46): I thank the member for his timely and well-articulated question to me, showing his great interest in this issue. Can I also say to the Leader of the Opposition that I have just checked with my office. My statements are correct; the robots are part of the contract. Spotless is a contracting party.

In relation to the question asked by the member for Croydon, the South Australian public hospitals have performed very strongly according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's national data collection on emergency department care and elective surgery waiting times. Those results were published today. This is a reflection of the outstanding performance of our doctors, nurses and other health workers who work in our public system, who work very hard to make sure that our patients receive quicker treatment in the emergency departments.

I would like to thank all of them for the very hard work they do, under often pressured circumstances. They have lifted their game year on year in our state. The report shows that South Australians presenting to hospital emergency departments are waiting for less time to be seen. The median waiting time—that is the time at which 50 per cent of people are seen—of 20 minutes in 2010-11, which is the year just gone, was three minutes below the national average, down from 29 minutes in 2007-08. We were only pipped at the post by one other jurisdiction, and that was New South Wales, which was marginally ahead on 19 minutes.

That is the best performance we have ever had in our state since national reports have been published. South Australia's 90th percentile waiting time, which is the number of minutes at which 90 per cent of patients were seen by a doctor or nurse in our emergency departments, was 104 minutes. That is 10 minutes below the national average and the very best result in Australia—the very best result in Australia. Our emergency departments saw 90 per cent of patients within 104 minutes, better than anywhere else in Australia, in 2010-11.

I am delighted to report that a greater percentage of patients in our EDs are being seen within the nationally agreed times. These are clinical times that are agreed upon. So South Australia's result in 2010-11 was 71 per cent of our patients in the emergency department were seen within the clinically recommended times. That is equal second nationally, again just behind New South Wales, but above the national average of 70 per cent, and we have steadily improved from 2007-08, when we were at 61 per cent.

That is year on year improvement in our emergency departments, even though sometimes the departments are pressured and there are more people there than obviously can be dealt with quickly. Sometimes, when we have had building works going on, that has caused pressure but, despite all of these things happening over the last year, we have performed pretty well—best in Australia, and second-best in a couple of areas.

This is the first time that this state has received such a high national ranking for this performance indicator, and it is the first time that the state has exceeded the national average, so I am very proud of the performance of our department and the people who work within it. Of course, I also need to acknowledge the great support from my colleagues in cabinet, and the Treasurer in particular, who funded this remarkable achievement.

We have also reported the second-lowest percentage of potentially avoidable GP-type presentations. It was 35 per cent, so there is still a lot of room to reduce the amount of GP-type presentations, but we are now 4 per cent below the national average, which shows our GP Plus strategies are working to improve access to health services outside of our emergency departments.

In elective surgery, the median wait time of 38 days was two days higher than the national average, but since 2010-11that has improved as well. In October this year, we have now fallen down to 34 days. That is the median time at which 50 per cent of people were seen. So, over half the people are seen in about a month, which I think is a pretty remarkable achievement.

The 90th percentile time was 208 days. That is, 90 per cent of people who need elective surgery, from the time they have been told they need elective surgery they receive that elective surgery within 208 days, which I think is a remarkable achievement; it is just over seven months, or around seven months, and that is 17.5 per cent below the national average.

Only 2 per cent of patients in our state admitted from waiting lists waited for more than a year—only 2 per cent waited for more than a year—and that is the third-lowest in the nation. Our $88.6 million investment over four years to fund 260,000 elective surgery procedures has led to this increased activity.

These results are on top of a report earlier this year which showed that our state has more hospital beds per population in both city and rural areas and more doctors and nurses working in public hospitals per head of population than any other mainland state. Our health system is one of the nation's—or, in fact, the nation's—most efficiently run.

From time to time there will be problems in our emergency departments, and there will be problems in our hospitals. With any system that deals with over one million people a year, there are going to be issues from time to time. You cannot highlight one of those issues and make a generalisation about the whole system; you have to go to the reports. You have to look at the real evidence, and the real evidence shows we have the best performing hospitals in Australia.

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