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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-03-22 Daily Xml
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Ambulance Ramping

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:10): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier have a target for reducing the hours of ambulances ramped at South Australian hospitals and, if not, why not? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: Yesterday, the health minister told the media that Labor did not have a target to reduce ramping hours despite the Premier referring to 2018 levels leading into the state election.

The SPEAKER: The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:10): I repeat what we said before the election, as the Premier has already outlined, which is that our commitment is to fix the ramping crisis. We are asked repeatedly then, 'What does that mean? To what point have you fixed the ramping crisis?'

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: We answered then, as we answer now: when we can get responses of ambulances back into the community. What we saw over the four years of the member for Dunstan—who is again not here—over his government—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TARZIA: Point of order, sir: reflecting on the presence of a member is out of order.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Badcoe, order!

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens, order! I have the—

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Chaffey! Your colleague has raised a point of order with me. I have the point of order. There is some force in it. It is contrary to the standing orders to reflect on the presence or otherwise of a member. The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I withdraw that comment. What we saw under the member for Dunstan's government was ambulance response times getting worse and worse as ramping was going up and up, and to the point where we now have the worst ambulance response times in the country. That meant as a—

Mr Pederick: And you have doubled ramping, haven't you.

The SPEAKER: The member for Hammond will leave under 137A for the remainder of question time.

The honourable member for Hammond having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens is warned. Minister.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: That meant that people in January last year who were calling for life-threatening emergencies, priority 2 emergencies, lights-and-sirens cases that were due to get ambulances arriving within 16 minutes, were only getting them 36 per cent of the time. About two out of three times that those cases were in the community, an ambulance wasn't rolling up on time putting those members of the community at risk, and we saw noted cases that were reported in terms of deaths that had occurred. That is why we are so determined on this issue, and we have to address ramping, we have to significantly reduce ramping so that we can increase those response times.

We have a situation where the ambulances that are ramped at the hospital can't respond into the community. These things are absolutely linked, the community understands that they are linked and we have to address the ramping to improve the response times. Of course, to address the ramping, we have to address what's going on in the rest of the hospital system. In the rest of the hospital system, we have every possible bed that we can opened up in the system. Every bed that we have an inherited we have opened up in the system, which means that we don't have the capacity for other patients, when there's high demand, to open additional beds in the system.

That's why we have committed as a government to prioritise health—not to prioritise a $662 million basketball stadium but to prioritise a $2.4 billion investment in health, with 550 additional beds going into the system. I am very delighted that as of next Monday we will be seeing 26 of those beds opening up at Flinders Medical Centre: fast-tracked work to make sure that we can increase the capacity. But there's a lot more to come. It takes time to build additional bed capacity.

You can't flick a switch and it appears overnight, but we are committed to delivering each and every one of our election commitments and going, in fact, even further with doing that. For instance, at Flinders Medical Centre we had committed before the election to open 24 more beds. Well, we are now in the process of delivering 136 more beds at that hospital. At Noarlunga Hospital we committed 24 beds. We have now increased that to 48. At Lyell McEwin Hospital we committed 24 beds. We have now increased that to 48.

We are tripling the number of beds, as you know, sir, as part of our plans at Mount Barker hospital, which is a critical need for the growing Hills community. So right across the system, investment is being made to make sure people can get out of the emergency department into beds when they need it, to make sure the ambulances can get off the ramp, responding to the community, which is exactly what we said before the election and exactly what we are delivering now.

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