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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-04-03 Daily Xml
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Flinders Medical Centre

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:31): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Is the Flinders Medical Centre safe for patients and staff? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: A SafeWork SA entry permit holder report submitted by the South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association on 17 March reported:

I was told on arrival that there was a medical patient in the FMC ED waiting 46 hours for a bed. The longest mental health patient had then been waiting in the FMC ED for 41 hours. I was told this was a replica of last year at this time when the hospital was in Code Yellow and nothing has changed or been implemented to ensure a safe working environment.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:31): I welcome the question from the shadow minister because it goes to exactly why we are expanding the Flinders Medical Centre. It goes exactly to why we have a $498 million program between the commonwealth and the state government to build additional beds at the hospital, including mental health beds, which are now under construction. Those beds at the back of the Flinders Medical Centre and at the Margaret Tobin Centre are well under construction, will be open this year and are some of the around 100 additional mental health beds that are coming into the system this year. That is the biggest increase in mental health beds in our system in a generation.

We know why those beds are so critical for the exact reason that the shadow minister outlined, and that is because—and from the report that was on the radio a few days ago—mental health patients, unfortunately, do get stuck in our emergency departments waiting for inpatient beds because we haven't got enough of those beds in the system. That's why part of that $498 million plan to expand Flinders Medical Centre is not only expanding the Margaret Tobin unit but also in SALHN we are building an additional 24 mental health beds at Noarlunga Hospital. We are also building an additional 24 mental health beds at The QEH. We are also building an additional 24 mental health beds at Modbury Hospital. All of those additional beds are coming online this year.

In addition, a number of Hospital in the Home beds for mental health are coming online as well across our northern and southern suburbs. Additional beds are coming online at Mount Gambier hospital. There are additional beds to come in the new Mount Barker hospital for the first time in the Adelaide Hills. So we know how critical mental health is to addressing the care not only for mental health patients but for other patients in our emergency departments. That is why we have a very detailed plan in terms of expanding the capacity.

Would I have loved to have had those plans in place previously? Would I have loved if we came to office and those plans were ready to go, ready for construction and ready to start work? Of course, but they were not. There were no plans for expanding mental health care in our system. We had to start from scratch. We had to do the consultation. We had to get the construction teams on board. Those construction works are well underway at the moment and will be open over the course of the next 12 months. They will provide a generational uplift in terms of the capacity of our system to cater for increasing demand on our mental health services, which will not only help those patients but all the other patients in our emergency departments who need that care.

Again, this goes to the point that we have been making and goes to the plans that we are implementing to build a bigger healthcare system. If the shadow minister has an alternative plan then we very much welcome the opportunity to see that.

The shadow minister asked me a question before in relation to the Women's and Children's Health Network. I have taken the opportunity just to check that in the last five minutes. I can confirm that on 12 March, when those cancellations occurred, my office was told that there had been notifications made to patients the day prior and there was very low risk to those patients, and the appropriate process took place in relation to those patients.

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