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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-10-17 Daily Xml
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Robe Community Paramedics

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the Robe community paramedics continue to be funded past their current contract? Mr Speaker, with your leave and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: I understand that the current contract for the Robe community paramedics is due at the end of December. These community paramedics cover an area as wide as Robe, Kingston, Beachport, Avenue and Lucindale. They treat patients in their own homes and their care helps prevent medical conditions from developing into situations that require urgent medical assistance.

Over the summer, the population in Robe swells from 1,500 to 15,000. Given the chronic doctor shortage in the town and surrounding towns, this service is vitally important. Robe paramedics need some surety of tenure that this service will continue to be funded on an ongoing basis.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:53): I thank the member for his question and his passion and care about health services in his region. It was great to visit the hospital recently in Kingston in the South-East with the member and to meet with the local health advisory council.

Clearly, Robe is an important community and, as the member says, particularly one which swells in numbers over the summer months and over holiday periods, etc., and for a number of years there has been an arrangement in place to have a community paramedic in place. This has been an arrangement that has been 50 per cent funded by the state government through a combination of SA Ambulance and the Limestone Coast Local Health Network and 50 per cent through the Country SA Primary Health Network, which is through the federal government.

From our perspective, we are very keen for this arrangement to continue. We think it has delivered benefit to the community and, of course, we are expanding similar roles across South Australia. As the member for Narungga knows, certainly we will be expanding a community paramedic in the Wallaroo community as well. As you, sir, know as well in terms of the member for MacKillop, obviously we have expanded paramedic roles through the arrangements in terms of bringing the Keith hospital into the public healthcare system as well.

We are in negotiations at the moment with the Country SA Primary Health Network. We are hopeful that that will be resolved to enable their funding to be able to continue, but certainly only today I had a discussion with Rob Elliott, the Chief Executive Officer of SA Ambulance Service, who has been having some of those discussions with the primary healthcare network. He is confident that this arrangement will continue past the end of the year, and we are hopeful that that will do so.

I might take the opportunity as well to note that, with respect to the discussion of Robe and its healthcare services, our thanks and the thanks of the whole house go to the incredible work of Dr David Senior in that community, who has been a bedrock of medical services in that community for many years, and I think this year is in fact his 30th year of providing services to that community. Thank you to him for really being the backbone of those services for so many, many years.

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