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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-03 Daily Xml
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Naracoorte Hospital

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Health. Can the minister update the house on the Draft Clinical Services Plan for the Limestone Coast? Mr Speaker, with your leave and leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: The draft plan was released in July after extensive consultation. Part of the plan includes renal dialysis for Naracoorte, which constituents have been really calling for.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:53): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and his significant advocacy in relation to this issue. As the member very well knows, we committed, upon coming to government, to invest in Naracoorte hospital, an $8 million investment in terms of the Naracoorte hospital, which I also know is of interest to the member for Adelaide as well.

Those works are underway at the moment, investing in particularly the emergency department area but also some of the key structural issues in the Naracoorte hospital that have been left to wilt for many, many decades, including a lift that was out of action and other significant infrastructure works that have needed to happen.

We were always clear as part of this that we regarded this as really stage 1 of works that needed to happen at Naracoorte hospital, which is a key hospital for that particular region. In the second budget the government had, we committed $1 million—and I thank the Treasurer and the Premier for that decision—towards future planning. That work is happening firstly in terms of Naracoorte hospital itself but secondly in terms of the broader regional planning as well.

The Limestone Coast Local Health Network have used that funding to engage Destravis, who are health planning experts, to firstly undertake a broad consultation and consideration process in terms of what the future looks like for the other hospitals in the Limestone Coast region, which obviously largely encompasses the member's own electorate—those hospitals outside of Mount Gambier. We now have the results of that. That has been published.

The draft clinical services plan gives a 10-year road map for what services need to be provided and where they should be provided, not just for the hospital but for community services across the Limestone Coast. That is part of the local health network's commitment to providing those safe, high-quality services across the region. Importantly, it looks to how we can adapt into the future as well—how things will be able to change with technology—and identify models of care that can provide contemporary care utilising the best practice models.

This has now gone out to the public, and there has been broad consultation with the community and with clinicians about this as well. There were initial consultations with staff, community members and key partners from February to April this year, and face-to-face sessions happened in July in Millicent, Robe, Kingston, Keith, Bordertown, Lucindale, Naracoorte, Penola and Mount Gambier. I understand that they were very well received by people. People have provided their input, but generally the plan has been met with significant interest and, I think, welcome by the local community.

In terms of what this will mean for the Naracoorte community, I think it does see the future expansion of some services in Naracoorte hospital and it does specifically raise renal dialysis as an issue for Naracoorte. We know that renal dialysis is an area that we are having to expand right across the state. At the moment, we are undertaking a big expansion in the northern suburbs of Adelaide and there have been a number of regional expansions that have happened in recent years as well, but we know that there is going to have to be more that has to be done into the future for renal dialysis. This is a sensible proposition. I understand it is listed in the plan as a medium-term objective.

Now this planning work will go into the other planning work for what the future of the next stage of works at Naracoorte hospital will look like, as we plan for the eventual rollout of improved services right across that Naracoorte site. I thank the community and I thank the member for his interest and support of this. It is going to help us to plan a better Naracoorte hospital into the short, medium and long term.

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