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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-11-11 Daily Xml
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Repatriation General Hospital

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): Has the minister done any modelling, has the department done any modelling or has any modelling been undertaken on the potential increases to the incidents of overcrowding at the Flinders Medical Centre emergency department if the Repatriation General Hospital is closed?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:20): Again, not that I am aware of, but I am more than happy to check. The important thing about emergency departments is that people go to the right place the first time. There are two things that affect our emergency departments: one is people not going to the correct place—not through any fault of their own, but it is very important. The easier we can make it for people to go to the correct place to get the health care they need, the better it is going to be for them.

The closest hospital may not always be the best hospital. If you are having a stroke, for example, it is very important that you go to a hospital that has the equipment and the clinicians who are able to look after you. If you go to the wrong place that is not able to provide that suite of services to enable you to be properly looked after, you will go there, you would have to be transferred to another place—all of that means delays. It means a delay to you being properly looked after. It is very important that people go not necessarily to the closest hospital but to the correct hospital, the right hospital. That is really what Transforming Health is all about.

The second issue with our emergency departments is, while we are very good at seeing people quickly—in fact, we have among the best performance numbers in the nation in terms of people being seen promptly by a doctor when they present to an emergency department—where we do have problems is getting people admitted into an acute bed when the decision is taken that they need to be admitted.

The other point of Transforming Health is: how do we create that capacity within our existing bed stock to make sure that, when people need admission into an acute bed, they have an acute bed available for that person to be admitted. That is what Transforming Health is all about. That is why we have had three clinical groups: we have had a group of doctors, a group of nurses and midwives, and a group of allied health professionals. It is the most comprehensive consultation ever undertaken in South Australia about its health system with the people at the coalface, the people who have to deal with the patients day in day out, the people who understand the system.

Any reconfiguration, anything that we do, will be based upon the advice of those clinicians about what we need to do to have the best possible health system for South Australia. I will always listen to the clinicians before I listen to anyone on the other side of the house when it comes to health policy.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Before the leader asks the supplementary, I call to order the member for Hammond and I warn, for the first time each, the members for Heysen, Hartley and Chaffey. The leader.

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