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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-12-04 Daily Xml
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Question Time

KordaMentha

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:11): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Given that the minister has been warned about the risks to patient care and given that he says that no clinical decisions are to be made by administrator KordaMentha, will the minister accept responsibility for any adverse patient outcomes as a result of implementing administrator KordaMentha's cuts to our health system?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:11): I would respond to the honourable member's question in this way: do I expect an improvement in patient outcomes as a result of the financial and organisational recovery that is going on in CALHN? The answer is, yes. I expect better patient outcomes.

The example of this I will actually take from a totally different network, and perhaps I might undertake to the house to come back with more details. It was my privilege to be involved in the SA Health awards last Friday night, and one of the projects that was praised was a project at NALHN, in the northern area, which worked with patients with orthopaedic needs and engaged them in clinics that had physiotherapists looking at alternatives to surgery.

What it was finding was that it was very successful, because a lot of patients found that they could deal with their orthopaedic issues through therapy—but physiotherapy in particular—rather than through surgery. One of the consequences of that will be that an inpatient bed, which was otherwise going to be dedicated to an orthopaedic patient, will no longer be needed for surgical use. So developing better patient pathways and avoiding the need for unnecessary orthopaedic surgery is both good for the patient and it is good for the system.

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