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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-14 Daily Xml
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SA Pathology

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:30): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing regarding SA Pathology.

Leave granted.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: In the state budget, the minister outlined a path for outsourcing SA Pathology work for local health networks. The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paddy Phillips, recently appeared before the Social Development Committee and was asked if there would be an impact if tests had to go interstate. He said, 'Yes, there would be.' When asked if there was a private provider in SA who would currently provide such analysis without SA Pathology, he replied, 'Not for the food side, I would have thought.' My questions to the minister are:

1. Has SA Health raised any concerns with you regarding the risks to public health investigations of the outsourcing or privatisation of SA Pathology?

2. Will the minister guarantee that he will not privatise laboratories of SA Pathology that are needed for public health investigations?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:31): As is often the case with opposition questions, they include statements of fact that are not statements of fact. The honourable member suggests that the government has made a decision to privatise SA Pathology; that is simply not true.

SA Pathology will undergo an external review to identify opportunities for improvement in order to provide appropriate care in a sustainable way into the future. PricewaterhouseCoopers has been appointed to undertake the review, commencing in September 2018. It will take approximately six months to examine in detail the public and commercial services provided by SA Pathology.

In that sense, it is a very similar process to what was undertaken by the former Labor government in 2014, which actually included a recommendation that SA Pathology services in country South Australia be privatised, so it is somewhat hypocritical of the Labor Party to say that it is inappropriate to even ask the question.

In terms of the access to testing services because they might need to go to the private sector, my understanding is that there are already tests that SA Pathology is not able to do, and some tests do already need to go into the private sector. Of course, we would expect PricewaterhouseCoopers to look at the availability of services in terms of scope, quality and timeliness, and I can assure the house that the government does not have a predetermined position. We are awaiting the outcome of the review, and we think that that will take approximately six months to complete.

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