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

Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:35): My question is to the Premier. Is fixing ramping the Premier's number one priority? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Fixing ramping was Labor's central election commitment in 2022. However, the latest ramping results from March were the second worst on record. The Labor government has now delivered the worst 22 months of ramping on record and more ramping in two years than the former Liberal government's entire four-year term.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:35): Yes, addressing the challenge of ramping remains the government's fundamental priority. I would also put housing up there with the challenges we see within the health system. So those two challenges that we see in the state occupy the bulk of the government's policy effort but—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Unley!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Not just policy effort but also investment in both those areas. We saw in the latest ramping statistics in full view the size of the challenge. Although, contained within them—and this is not an exercise in seeking to cherrypick only the positive, because we don't deny the size of the challenge that exists. But the turnaround that we have seen, which I am reluctant to call just yet to get a full trend, is a big turnaround within NALHN, particularly at the Lyell McEwin Hospital but obviously also including Modbury Hospital. It is a demonstration to the government that notwithstanding growing demand on resources, which remains a big challenge, we can with thoughtful purpose design solutions for that particular context. We can get solutions to result in improved host patient flowthrough.

The most acute challenge is at the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, where of course the RAH remains a significant concern to the government in terms of its transfer-of-care hours lost. I think we should be able, in the space of the next week or so, to release our ambulance response time data. What we have been able to see with the numbers that we've got available to us at this point is that, notwithstanding the burgeoning demand on our hospital system, ambulance response times have maintained their level of improvement, which we are very, very grateful for, but the top challenge remains a central focus of the government.

I would say what we will start to see throughout the course of the second half of this year—as the health minister and I have been out most recently. We are starting to see rapidly approaching the commissioning of the new beds that we are putting into the system. They were beds that were funded in our very first budget handed down by the Treasurer in June 2022. Since then, the design and construction work has been happening at pace so that we now—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: What we will see in the second half of this year is 150 beds coming online—they are new beds—and then another 130 beds next year. From there on, what we will see is more and more beds come online, particularly at places like Mount Barker, which I know is a massive project that is close to your heart, Mr Speaker, along with Flinders Medical Centre with the big $450 million upgrade there, providing a lot more beds, which we only released the designs on in the last fortnight. So there is a serious plan for serious growth in the number of beds in the system.

Where we have also been able to deliver results most recently is in the recruitment of the nurses and doctors who will service those patients in those new beds. Now, we all would have liked that work to be completed sooner but, alas, it was this government that had to make the investments and, in the quickest time possible, we are getting those investments online.

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