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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-02 Daily Xml
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SA Health Focus Week

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:19): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister explain the purpose of Focus Week? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: Branch Secretary of the Health Services Union, Billy Elrick, said that Focus Week is 'a little bit galling. The idea that workers aren't giving it their 100% right now is absolutely ridiculous'.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:20): I certainly agree, our workers are giving 100 per cent and they are doing an incredible job.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned.

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: Thank you, sir. Our doctors, our nurses and our allied health professionals are doing an incredible job, day in and day out, in our hospital system. They are working under a significant amount of pressure, and it's pressure that hasn't just been there for the past 13 months; it has been there for the past five years we have been under, and we are giving them extra resources that they need to provide their job.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: What has been proposed out of this week is an ability for, particularly, a number of the executive staff to make sure that we are having non-urgent meetings not take place in that week so that there is as much time as can be focused on improving procedures throughout our health system, throughout our hospital system—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —ultimately to make sure that the things that the Leader of the Opposition was just asking about in relation to the performance of the system can be addressed, and we can unblock each element of that system that we know needs to be addressed. Ultimately, as I have said publicly, the fix that we need in our health system is more resources. We are doing that, and we are building additional capacity and we are hiring additional staff. This week will hopefully give us the opportunity to look at some of those processes; how we can improve things. What inevitably happens, over the past many years, is that the system gets to a point—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Morialta! The minister has the call.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: The system gets to a point at which it's under such significant pressure that codes have to be alerted, that messages go out to cancel non-urgent meetings, etc., etc. What is being proposed here is to get ahead of the game, to do proactive work, to try to improve systems and to try to make sure that we can minimise the need for that to happen later on. So I am hopeful that this is something on which we will see some results.

Is it going to fix all the issues? Of course not. Could it help to improve some of these systems and give our clinicians some space to be able to help unblock those elements where we know patients get stuck? Well, that's the hope. Is it going to involve asking staff to do additional forced overtime? That's very clearly not the intention of this. The intention is to do things which are sustainable into the long term to make sure that there are proactive things that can be done to improve the situation for patients. I would have hoped that that's something that everybody in this house could have supported.

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