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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-15 Daily Xml
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Weekend Hospital Discharges

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. What action is the government taking to address weekend hospital discharge rates?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:02): Thank you very much to the member for Davenport, and I thank her for her very strong interest in relation to the healthcare system. As we have made very clear a number of times, to address the issues in the healthcare system we need to address every element of a patient's journey. One of the key ones is in terms of making sure that the patients can get access to timely discharge from the hospital system when they need it.

But, of course, we know that there are many patients who do not get a timely discharge from the hospital system when they need it, and that is often because the staffing that is there Monday to Friday is not always there over the weekends, and that is an historical thing that has been in place here, interstate, and around the world in fact, in many hospital systems.

That leads to a situation where we see a significant decline in the number of discharges that happen over the weekend. It means that a number of patients end up waiting longer than they need to in order to get back home or to other care and, of course, being in hospital longer than you need to is not a great outcome for the patient and it is also not a great outcome for the health system when other people need those beds and that care.

That is why the government, the Premier and the Treasurer announced in the state budget this year $27 million over four years for additional initiatives, for extra staff, to help address that weekend discharge and make sure that we can address the flow through the system, to make sure that we can improve the rate of discharges over the weekend and make sure that, particularly at the start of the week, we are starting in a better situation than we often are.

I am glad that we now have a situation where that money has been distributed across particularly the three metropolitan local health networks that have developed up their local plans for how to spend that money, how to hire additional staff and how to put additional staff on to make sure that that weekend discharge can happen.

There are different approaches that have been taken throughout the three metropolitan local health networks. In the northern suburbs, the Lyell McEwin Hospital, their main element of what they are spending the money on is establishing what they are calling a flying squad. It will be a multidisciplinary team, including medical—so doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physios and social workers—and that team will be able to work across the hospital at the Lyell McEwin Hospital to identify patients who need that discharge and make sure that that can happen.

In addition, they will have a dedicated social work weekend position within the short stay mental health unit to facilitate discharges, and additional weekend resources in aged care, rehabilitation, palliative care, which will also lead to more weekend discharges.

At Flinders Medical Centre in the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network, their focus is on additional allied health professionals, predominantly pharmacists and other allied health, to be working across the weekend. Often, what we have heard from our clinical staff is it is waiting for pharmacy scripts, waiting for other allied health assessments that's the barrier to discharge occurring. They will have additional pharmacists operating over extended hours and seven days to support complex discharges and earlier medication history to support patient flow. At the same time, physios, social workers and occupational therapists reduce unnecessary length of stays in hospital and reduce preventable readmissions.

At the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, at the RAH and the QEH, they are in consultation with their staff about setting up a weekend multidisciplinary discharge team in general medicine. That will help identify potential weekend discharges on Thursday and Friday to support criteria-led discharges over the weekend and will include nurse navigators, pharmacists, physios, occupational therapists, social workers and dietitians. In addition, there will be an additional mental health consultant at The QEH to support overnight mental health. All of these measures go to supporting patient flow, helping to make sure that patients can get the care they need.

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