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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-10-16 Daily Xml
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Hospital Beds

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (14:53): Last supplementary: can or will the minister guarantee that not a single patient will be sent home again, simply because the minister has placed beds on stand-by or closed hospital beds?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:53): The member would do well to look at my comments yesterday about the importance of having surge capacity, capacity within the hospital, to respond to the needs of patients. I should clarify, too: it's not just, shall we say, the general patients being transferred into the hospital. If you have a hospital that is jammed to the rafters, not only are you more likely to not be able to admit general patients, it's also much less likely that a patient with special needs will be able to get a bed, particularly a bed in the area in which they need it.

For example, whether that is an infectious disease or whether it is mental health, it's very important that we have surge capacity and that we have it, shall we say, broadly across the hospital. What I can assure the people of South Australia is that, by putting surge capacity into our hospitals, we will be better able to respond to their needs when they need care.

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