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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-03-24 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Health Review

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:04): My question is to the Minister for Health. How many hospital beds will be lost in the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network as a result of the government's decision to close the Repat?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:04): We make no secret that South Australia has more acute hospital beds per head of population than any other Australian state or territory, at 3.1. Clearly, I would like to get that number down because, really, it is a misallocation of resources. We need to change our bed mix so that we have more subacute beds and fewer acute beds, more in line with the rest of the national population.

Obviously, I am not going to close any acute beds and reduce our acute bed stock at all until I am confident that we have the capacity to do that, and we will be undertaking a body of work over the next 12 months to make our hospitals work better, to make the bed flows work better, so that we can release that capacity. Over time, as we are able to demonstrate that we have acute beds that we don't require, we won't continue. But we won't do that until I am confident that we have been able to demonstrate we have got the capacity that we need.

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