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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-06-18 Daily Xml
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Ambulance Services

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (14:11): Supplementary, sir: for absolute clarity, if a patient turns up at the Noarlunga emergency department and told immediately that they should be presenting to the Flinders emergency department, not admitted, not even triaged, but then put in an ambulance, is the cost of that ambulance service covered by SA Health?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:11): That would just never happen. You are never ever going to have a circumstance where someone is so seriously ill that they present to the Noarlunga emergency department and the nurse doesn't even look at them. That's just ridiculous. They are never ever going to do that. They are never going to say, 'You're so sick we can't even look at you.' They are going to give you some initial treatment. Generally, I imagine, they will take you into the resuscitation bay and attempt to stabilise you before you are transferred.

I cannot envisage there ever being a circumstance where a decision was taken that someone had to be transferred because the emergency department they had presented to wasn't able to look after them, where they would not even be looked at. In any case, unless there was an ambulance on the premise that was ready to go, it would be some time before an ambulance presented to transfer that person. Again, in those circumstances they are not going to leave you sitting there while you are having your heart attack, or your stroke, or you are bleeding to death and refuse to give you any sort of treatment.

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