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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-08-30 Daily Xml
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Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:12): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister advise the house when recommendation 15 of the external governance review of the Cochlear Implant Program will be implemented? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: Recommendation 15 on page 44 of the review states:

..the Women's and Children's Health Network as a matter of urgency ensure a speech therapist with cochlear implant expertise is employed as part of the Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:13): It is very important that we make sure that there be speech pathology provided as part of the cochlear implant mapping service, as the external governance report makes clear.

One of the issues in relation to how the service had been operating for well over a decade had been involving not utilising appropriately speech therapist and pathology services as part of that mapping work. The report goes into some detail in relation to how there were two audiologists involved in the mapping, whereas it would be better to have a speech pathologist or a speech therapist as part of that process to make sure that that was validated through understanding that the mapping was working as part of that process.

So that is an urgent recommendation. The advice that I have is that the Women's and Children's Hospital have already added additional speech therapy services, but I am happy to get more detail in relation to that specific recommendation. This is one of those 59 recommendations that are accepted, that we have now passed Professor Bagley and an implementation group to make sure are implemented across the Women's and Children's Hospital network. The group will include consumer representatives to make sure that their voices are heard as part of that process. We are absolutely committed to making sure that each and every one of those recommendations is implemented in full.

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