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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-04-09 Daily Xml
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Elective Surgery

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the minister or his office received any advice about whether elective surgeries may need to be cancelled to manage the demands on the health system this winter?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:43): I thank the member for her question. As the Premier just outlined, we have been very clear that, if there are to be any statewide directions in place for elective surgery, as was put in place a couple of weeks ago for a two-day pause on nonurgent elective surgery, then that is something we would communicate publicly. I have no advice that such an additional move would be considered or is being considered at this time.

As the Premier has already outlined to the parliament as well, SA Health, the Department for Health and Wellbeing, and the local health networks are currently working away on this year's winter demand strategy. There are a couple of things to say on that. As the Premier said, we have put in place winter demand strategies for the past two years. That is different from what had happened under the previous government, where three out of four years there was not a winter demand strategy in place under those years. For three out of four years, it was not in place. We have decided to do that. There will be a winter demand strategy that will be put in place and there will be consideration of a number of factors across managing demand across our health system.

Having said that, we do face significant year-round demand in our health system as well. At the moment, we are seeing significant demand each season of the year on our hospital system, and peaks of flu, COVID and other diseases affecting our health system through the year. That doesn't mean that we are not aware that there could be substantial additional demand in winter. Obviously, we need to prepare appropriately for that, but we are also doing the hard work to make sure that our health system is more resilient right through the year and in every month.

We just had, before question time started, a number of additional Public Works Committee reports being brought to the parliament. One after one, these additional building works are either being completed, starting construction or soon to be underway to build that additional capacity. A key element of that has been building additional beds throughout our hospital system. We haven't seen significant additional beds being built for some time in SA Health. To see, over the course of this year—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: We tore up the sale contract of the Repat.

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —150 extra beds coming into the system, and next year 130 extra beds coming into the system, is basically the equivalent of opening another QEH within the course of the next two years, with more beds to come, of course, after that as well. So we are building the additional capacity that we need, to make sure that not only can we see emergency cases but we have also got the capacity to make sure that people who have needs for elective surgery can be seen without cancellations affecting them as well.

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