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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Elective Surgery Wait Times

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. What does the minister say to patient Sue Berndt, and what action will he take to help her? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order from the Leader of Government Business.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Reluctant as I am, sir, to interrupt the member for Schubert, that question on its own makes no sense.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia: Why are you so grumpy today?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am not grumpy.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my left, I am trying to listen to the point of order. Can everyone on my left just calm down and be quiet so I can hear the point of order? Thank you.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Erskine May is clear, sir: a question should be understandable without explanation. Sir, that question is obviously not understandable without explanation, and it should be ruled out of order.

The SPEAKER: Would you like to have—

Mrs HURN: Another go?

The SPEAKER: —or a little rework of the words?

Mrs HURN: Very happy to. My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. How does the minister respond to the experience of patient Sue Berndt waiting for an orthopaedic specialist appointment, and what action will he take to help her? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mrs HURN: Sue is a Barossa local who was a nurse for 50 years. She has been waiting years to see an orthopaedic specialist for her shoulder, which is so bad that she can barely dress herself. I first raised this with the minister in 2023.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:55): I thank the member for her question. I spoke to Ms Berndt on Sunday after this issue was raised and assured her that we will be looking into this matter. I have asked the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network to look into this matter and I also spoke to the director of orthopaedic surgery for Northern Adelaide Local Health Network to look into this matter.

We know that we need to increase the number of elective surgeries that we are performing, and that is exactly what we are doing and that is exactly what we have done in the past year. Over the past year, we increased the number of elective surgeries that we performed by over 10 per cent. That is over 5,000 more South Australians who were able to receive their elective surgery operation than the year before. When the Leader of the Opposition was asked about that fact on radio the other day, he referred to it as 'cherrypicking' or something like that, but this is 5,000 more South Australians who are getting elective surgery—real people—than was the case the year before—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my left will come to order. Leader and Deputy Leader, you will come to order.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: —and we are determined to continue to do so. That is one of the key reasons why we are, of course, expanding the size of our health service, adding more beds and adding more doctors and nurses so that we can make sure that not only are we dealing with emergency cases but also elective surgery cases.

It is also why we are engaging with the private health system. Recently, the Treasurer and I announced a new partnership with Western Hospital, saving Western Hospital from imminent closure. Part of that arrangement has been that we have enabled a pathway for public patients to be able to access that hospital for their surgery, particularly focused on orthopaedic patients and a direct pathway from the outpatient list all the way through their journey. This has been helping many patients in just the past few months that we have had it in place and we are going to continue to expand on those sorts of measures.

I am further advised in terms of Ms Berndt's case that on 28 February 2025, NALHN did reach out and left a message to her to look at whether she could be part of this pathway. Unfortunately, they were unable to reach her by phone, but clearly left a message in terms of whether she would be keen to be part of that pathway. Of course, as part of that pathway, there will be clinical criteria that will apply as to whether people have comorbidities, etc., and whether the complexity of which will be possible to undertake in Western Hospital or other types of hospitals that we undertake that surgery in, or whether it will need to be undertaken in a major tertiary hospital such as the Lyell McEwin Hospital.

I will continue to look into the particular case that has been raised, but we will also continue to invest in additional surgeries so that more patients can be seen. We know that there are many more patients who are coming onto the list, so we need to increase the number of patients who are getting their surgery. We have done that already in the past year, but we will continue to do so.

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