Mornings with Graeme GoodingsLet's go out to Ascot Park.
Deb good morning, Yeah, good morning. I want to talk to you about the roy Ladelaide Hospital.
Sure.
My cousin is a part of hospital design. She helped design the hospital in Broken Hill. She lives in Sydney. The very intelligent woman. She was part of the Royal Ladelaide Hospital designs way way way back, and she said back then that it is far too small. You will outgrow that in no time. The minute you build it, it will be too small.
Well, the warning signs were there, they were by so many people. Yeah, that's exactly right.
I noticed way way back then. And look what we've got. Ye've got a problem. And why do they pay these design people to come in and sit on the board and design the hospital and they take no notice?
Debia, thanks for the input. And of course did they listen to clinicians who issued warnings at the time of a shortfall in so many areas, But they didn't listen and they went and built it. I think it was the time. It was the dearest building built in that year, two point three billion dollars and here we are eight years later, run out of space. How can that possibly happen? Carrol says, why not ask Premier Pete why his government got the RAH so wrong? His answer, the previous government. Of course, we can't say that, Carol, because the government, the government that commissioned the RAH was a labor government. He was not Health Minister at the time, but when the hospital was about to open he was Health minister, so he presided over the time. When the RAH came into being. Jack Snilling was the Health Minister who commissioned it initially eight double two three double do doublo. Since the designs issues, since it was contemplated and thought about, the RAH has rarely been out of the news and as you've probably seen and heard on our news this morning, the Essay Health originally leased out of space at the Royal Adelaide to a private consortium, but they then realized it actually needed that space, so guess what they had to rent it back and reported eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars. This is their own hospital, mind you, and our Essay Health wants to break the lease. That means finding a new home for the respiratory services currently using the space. Parliament Health Services Committee Chair Connie Bnaro's MLC. It's called the situation unbelievable, she joins me. Now, Connie, this is truly a remarkable situation.
It's good morning, Graham, and good morning to your listeners. And I think, as Brad Krouch reported today in the other side, it is simply breastaking.
Isn't it?
Absolutely extraordinary state of affairs. But I think, Graham, it goes to the heart of the evidence given by Bernadette maul Holland and doctor Meghan Brooks last week about the planning and the lack of input clinicians had in the original design of the hospital and the impacts that had then and is continuing to have on patients and clinicians today. And what people probably didn't hear from that evidence was the very ugly but accurate picture that doctor Brooks painted about how ill canceive the decision making was at the time. But that continues to impact clinicians and patients today. And when you're talking about clinicians who had to sleep in sleeping bags, who didn't have a break between Christmas and Easter because just because they were trying to make sure that that first inflow of patients were looked. After they're moving furniture around to make the rooms workable. It's pretty harrowing to think that this is the condition that we put clinicians and patients under. But the least arrangement shows that it's been a problem since the hospital opened, since twenty seventeen. We apparently forgot to plan for an entire unit at the old hospital when we designed the new hospital, and then realized, oh, there's nowhere to put them, so we're going to have to, as you said, lease back from the consortium our own space to fit them. Now, I think what's happened and this is you know, obviously we don't have access to those commercial and confidence contracts, but I think the bean counters have woken up and realized that since twenty seventeen, we've been paying, you know, some eight hundred and eighty one thousand dollars a year to lease space that belongs to the hospital to a private consortium. So we're going to break that because that's a waste of money, but at the expense of what at the expense of a unit that now has to shift out of the hospital. And therein lies the issue with infectious diseases matter that's currently on foot in the tribunal. They are being asked to shift out of the hospital across the road into other premises. That raises the whole host of issues. And I will say, Graham, off the back of a pandemic as well. You know we've just gone through a COVID pandemic. The infectious diseases unit was critical during that period and continues to be so. The idea that we would make a decision and I understand what the Minister says that the final decision now hasn't been made, but the idea that we would even contemplate shifting infectious diseases out of the hospital and across the roads, it beggars belief.
That's Connie Benaros MLC, who was the chair of the parliament Health Services Committee, just as remarkable evidence and giving evidence to the committee. Bernadette Mulholland Essay, Salary Medical Officers Association, Bernadette, good morning to you.
Good morning.
So what was the principal thrust of the evidence that you gave.
Look from the commencement of this process, when we found out that the infectious diseases services were to be offsite, we were incredibly concerned and so were the conditions. In fact, many of the conditions were in that service were quite distraught. The services, as Conni Banarus mentioned, is clinically multitask with many other services in that hospital and are called away from their clinics to go and see other services to provide their professional response to infections perhaps in a hip or a knee, or even some greater infections that they need to be there at a fairly quick pace to have them those Some of those services now being placed off site is going to have an impact on the efficiency of that particular service and indeed for patients and other clinical services throughout the hospital. It is highly unusual that we see a service, a public service, being put off the hospital site that's really necessary for that hospital to allow for a private service to be incorporated into the hospital. And I think from our perspective, if it is correct and the ministry is now saying that there is no decision made, that the state government now step in and bring some common sense to this debate and make sure that our patients and our clinicians can provide the services that they can without these hindrances that continue to be put in place by the administration. It has been clearly said to us that this is about finance and about budgets. This decision and they have not reflected about how that is going to impact on the clinical care for our patients.
Bendette Mulholland, thanks for the time. Essays Salary Medical Officers Association WYVE double A Mornings with Gram Goodings
