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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-09-05 Daily Xml
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SA Pathology

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (15:11): Supplementary: does the minister believe that threatening SA Pathology staff with redundancies, efficiency targets and privatisation if they don't meet his benchmarks will result in better patient outcomes?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:12): The government has made it very clear that we have a responsibility to ensure that our public health services are run efficiently. That includes making sure that we pay reasonably comparable costs for pathology services as compared with interstate peers. In that regard, we are no different from the Labor Party. The Labor Party, in 2014, commissioned the Ernst and Young reports.

In 2013, Ernst and Young was commissioned by the department for health and ageing to assess the efficiency, effectiveness and financial performance of pathology services in South Australia. The most significant initiative of the efficiency improvement program was a proposed new operational configuration and workforce model for SA Pathology, and it included significant FTE reductions.

If the honourable member is suggesting that somehow SA Pathology staff are not able to work towards efficiencies, as do their interstate peers, I don't agree with her, and clearly the actions of the former government indicated that they also didn't agree. They did believe and we believe that responsibly working with SA Pathology can see efficiencies provided to the taxpayers and patients of South Australia.

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