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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-27 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

KordaMentha Report

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:11): Yesterday was a very sad day for South Australia and a very sad day indeed for our hospitals. It was when we had the new Liberal government hand over control of two of our biggest hospitals in this state, not to doctors, not to nurses, but to corporate liquidators KordaMentha. They have given KordaMentha a $19 million contract to be the administrators of the Royal Adelaide Hospital and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital—two of our largest hospitals—and they have set them the task of coming up with $460 million worth of cuts to hospital services.

Before the election, of course, the Liberals said, 'We will fix Health.' They said, 'We won't cut Health.' They said, 'We will improve services.' They said, 'We will increase the number of beds. We will increase the number of elective surgeries. We won't cut the number of doctors and nurses in hospitals.' What we are seeing directly afterwards is exactly the opposite. The reports that were released yesterday set the blueprint for the Liberals in Health in this state. What this means is that there are going to be bed closures, there are going to be reductions in staff and there are going to be reductions in the number of operations that are performed.

The only winners out of this report are KordaMentha. KordaMentha had a great day. They first did a $2 million report that recommended appointing them to do a $19 million report. It was a pretty good deal for them. It is a bit like when Dick Cheney was asked to pick who George Bush's vice president should be and said, 'I think I should do it.'

KordaMentha now have the gig. There are going to be two KordaMentha executives who are going to be appointed hospital executives. In my view, it is going to lead to a very dangerous situation in hospitals. In fact, we know that it is potentially dangerous because KordaMentha themselves say that this is a clinical risk. They say that there is a medium risk that implementation of their cuts plan will lead to increased clinical risk in our hospitals. That is very bad news for our patients. As time goes on, since this was released yesterday, we are learning more and more about what the cuts in this report will mean for South Australians.

Firstly, we have learnt that it is going to involve a reduction in the number of procedures that are done at these two hospitals: 18,000 weighted units of procedures are going to be cut. They are saying, 'We are not going to do anything above the cap level that we set.' Of course, our public hospitals are there to provide services for people when they need them. We do not have a sign at the door saying, 'We have treated too many patients today. You are not allowed in.' We treat everybody who comes through that door. The only way that they can cut 18,000 units of patient activity is to take an axe to elective surgery in this state.

We know that what is proposed in this report is the equivalent of 4,500 hip operations being cut or 3,500 coronary bypass operations. So there are a number of operations that people in South Australia will be relying on the public hospital system to deliver, but the Liberals are going to say, no, they are going to cut those. We had the Premier today saying that he thinks these are unnecessary procedures. Try telling that to the family member of somebody who is waiting on an elective surgery waiting list. We want to make sure that these patients get their surgery, that they get treated and get better. This government is seeking to cap and cut those procedures.

Another thing that we have learnt is that there are going to be significant cuts to beds in South Australia. The report says that some 65,000 bed overnight days are going to be cut. That is the equivalent of some 178 beds in our hospitals. Of course, we had the Liberal Party before the election saying they were going to open more beds. In fact, the Premier was saying that today until he changed tack halfway through; I think he realised what his plan actually is. Then he said, 'We are going to have the requisite number of beds.'

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr PICTON: That is right. Is the requisite number more or less beds?

Mr Malinauskas: Less.

Mr PICTON: I think the answer is the requisite number is going to be less beds. It is going to lead to closures of beds in our hospitals, closures of wards in our hospitals, and patients will be paying the price for that.

We had in the other place the Minister for Health go so far as to say, 'The problem with hospitals is we don't want hospitals full of patients.' Goodness! How bad would that be? It is a bit like Yes Minister when you have this very efficient hospital that has no patients in it. It would be a KordaMentha-approved hospital, I am sure, that had no patients in it. That is the recipe that we are seeing from the Liberal Party and it is going to damage patient health care in South Australia.

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