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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-04-30 Daily Xml
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Ambulance Ramping

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:26): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Does the minister agree with Phil Palmer of the Ambulance Employees Association that the number of hours ambulances were ramped in March actually increased from 1,100 last year to 1,559 this March?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:27): I will certainly take that question on notice because I don't have that information available. It is interesting, though, because it's the same day that I was having part of a conversation with Lesley Dwyer, the Chief Executive of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, who highlighted that hours lost to ramping at the Central Adelaide Local Health Network have halved—that is my recollection of the statement—since the stop ramping summit.

I think it is an important point to highlight in the context of my earlier statement about the Central Adelaide Local Health Network; the point being that the financial sustainability of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network and the RAH in particular is being strengthened at the same time as quality of care is being strengthened. For example, if we can increase the flow of patients—evidenced by the fact that there has been a half a day length of stay reduction since the CALHN recovery plan has been underway—that means that we have fewer patients, particularly elderly patients, who are at the hospital and therefore vulnerable to hospital-based infections.

The other aspect in which I think the financial recovery has backed quality of care is in relation to the use of agency nurses. Under the financial recovery plan the percentage of agency nursing staff used fell from 7.7 per cent in January to 0.7 per cent last month. It is really important to highlight that to have the continuity of care of a stable nursing workforce that knows each other and knows their patients is a significant improvement for the quality of care that is provided to patients, not just to the financial.

In terms of coding, the Treasurer, I know, is quite excited about the improvements in addressing the coding backlog—9,000 uncoded episodes of care. What it did was not merely undermine the financial situation of the hospital but also understate the level of care being delivered. It meant that people looking at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, I am told, could see a hospital that was the same level of acuity as the Mount Gambier hospital.

With all due respect to the honourable members from the South-East, including my honourable colleague the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and all sorts of things, the Mount Gambier hospital is not a quaternary hospital; it is not operating at the same level of acuity. The former Labor government's mismanagement of the financial situation at the RAH meant that we were losing millions and millions of dollars. That's part of the reason why, when this government took on the Royal Adelaide Hospital and The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, it was budgeted to have a budget overspend this financial year of $300 million. I am proud of the fact that under the Marshall Liberal government not only have we recovered the financial situation by about $41 million but we have also improved quality of care.

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