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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-09-26 Daily Xml
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Modbury Hospital

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (14:44): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the Minister for Health on the subject of metropolitan health services.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: I understand that the minister had a tour of the Modbury Hospital last Friday, with the member for Florey and the Premier. After the tour the Premier was so moved that he announced a review of Modbury health services. My questions are:

1. What is the scope of the review?

2. Who is undertaking the review?

3. When will the review be completed?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:45): I thank the honourable member for her questions; they are important ones. This is information I am very keen to shed some light on for the sake of those members of the community in the north-eastern suburbs who are rightly passionate about the services that are provided by the Modbury Hospital. I will try to deal with each of the questions the honourable member has asked.

First, the honourable member is right to mention that the Premier announced a review of the services that are being provided by the Modbury Hospital. We have essentially had 12 months, or thereabouts, since a large number of changes were introduced at the Modbury Hospital, and some of those changes are delivering good results. As I mentioned earlier, we have seen the number of elective surgeries successfully occurring at Modbury Hospital increase, and I am advised that that figure is in the order of a 32 per cent increase in surgeries that have occurred at Modbury Hospital.

In this forum that might sound like just another statistic—we hear a lot of statistics in this place and I can assure members that Health is full of them; I have read a few over the last seven days—but that 32 per cent increase in elective surgeries that have occurred at Modbury over a 12-month period is actually a lot more than a number to the people who are the beneficiaries of them. The sorts of surgeries we see take place at Modbury are things like breast cancer surgery, knee surgery, foot and ankle surgery. For the people who are the beneficiaries of those surgeries, their standard of living is demonstratively improved as a consequence of getting that surgery done. That is a good thing.

So, in undertaking this exercise to review what we are doing at Modbury I want to be very, very clear that there are good things that have occurred. We don't want to start making changes that would unpick all that hard work to the extent that we start to see the benefits reversed, so the challenge before us is to do a review of what is occurring at Modbury with the objective of continuously improving what occurs for the residents of the north-east. That is what has been at the heart of all the changes that have occurred up to this point, and that is why we are seeing a number of benefits. We want that trajectory of improvement to continue so that all residents in the north-eastern suburbs and the northern suburbs generally, within the NALHN health area, do get a benefit.

In respect to the honourable member's question as to who is leading the review, that is being led by me. The Premier has asked me to undertake this exercise and it is something I am looking forward to doing. The methodology that will be applied is pretty rudimentary: I will be talking to as many people as possible, including constituents of the local community, many of whom we have already met through the exercise of getting around last Friday. I will also be talking to representatives of the local community, namely members of parliament, but also, critically, I want to hear directly from clinicians, from doctors, from nurses, from allied health professionals who work at Modbury and for them to provide feedback from their experience around what has occurred at Modbury in recent times.

Once I've heard all this information and have learnt as much as I can over a relatively confined period—I will not put a specific date around when it will be concluded, but the Premier made it clear last week that it would be a matter of weeks; that doesn't mean two or three weeks but it also doesn't mean three or four months—we want to work through this as quickly as possible. Within a matter of weeks we will be seeking to undertake this exercise and see what we can find out from it. In respect to the first component—

The Hon. J.M.A. Lensink: The scope.

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS: Yes, the scope, the first component of the Hon. Ms Lensink's question, the scope is pretty much that everything is on the table. There is nothing we are ruling in or ruling out, including, of course, the Liberal Party's new policy that was announced on day one of my taking on the responsibility for Health. It's amazing how a reshuffle provoked a policy within the Liberal Party, which is a good thing. You are getting a policy; that's a good thing.

The policy itself that the Liberal Party has proposed is not something that we are ruling out. Everything is on the table. Of course, there needs to be a lot more thought and detail put into the Liberal Party's policy because it essentially was a couple of dot points on an A4 piece of paper. Nevertheless, the idea is being considered and what we want to do is contemplate, put all the detail in behind it and put all the detail in behind every other option that is on the table to make sure we end up achieving what our objective is and, like I said, that is continuous improvement for the residents of the north-eastern suburbs when it comes to health and service delivery generally.

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