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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-05-17 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (14:38): Supplementary, Madam Speaker: if patients admitted to his hot floor are deemed to have been discharged from the emergency department but they have not been admitted to an acute inpatient bed in the hospital, how will they be accounted for?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts) (14:38): I will get a technical explanation for the member, but, as I understand it, they are admitted into that hot floor, that is a ward. It is a hospital ward. It is like any other hospital ward; it has a particular purpose. What is expected is that those patients would spend up to—

Mr Hamilton-Smith interjecting:

The Hon. J.D. HILL: You say that it is a fix, but it is fixing a problem by having patients removed from the emergency department and put into a hospital bed in a ward, which is like every other ward in the hospital. They are being admitted into a hospital ward. This is what everyone says they want us to do and we are doing it, and somehow it is some sort of fix. This is putting a patient in a—

Mr Hamilton-Smith: It's an extension of the emergency department?

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.D. HILL: No, it is not an extension of the emergency department. That would be making a bigger emergency department. It is being used by doctors in the emergency department to find patients who are likely to need hospitalisation for a period time. So there will be up to—

Mr Hamilton-Smith: A halfway house.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: A halfway house might a good explanation for it. Up to 48 hours they will spend in there. That gives the doctors time to do the assessments and the review. They will have their own staff. It will be more like an intensive care unit than an emergency department. All the tests and observations will be done in an appropriate way. This is a breakthrough in the way we manage patients, and I commend Dr Villis Marshall, the general manager of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, for initiating this. If you want to mock him, that is fine.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for MacKillop, order! If the member for MacKillop and the member for Waite want to have a conversation they can go outside and do it. Member for Light.

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