Embattled SA Health hires consultants KPMG for $1.6m to investigate new workforce plan

SA Health is paying one of the world’s top accounting firms $1.6m to review its staff crisis, but insists there is no plan to cut employee numbers.

Taxpayers are paying one of the world’s biggest accounting firms to review the embattled health system’s workforce.

SA Health has hired global advisory organisation KPMG for $1.6m to investigate a new 10-year plan to address issues that are stopping the $8bn system from having the “right capabilities and capacity”.

A leaked government document states the audit, tax, and advisory service firm, will use modelling and staff interviews to overhaul healthcare skills, innovations, attraction and retention strategies, education as well as training.

An SA Health spokeswoman insisted the plan had “no criteria to reduce staff numbers”.

But clinicians, unions and MPs fear it will pave the way for cost-cutting or “role substitution” amid record ramping and mounting staff fatigue.

They argued it was similar to the Liberals paying consultants Korda Mentha $33m to fix the health’s budget in 2018.

But senior government officials defended the KPMG tender as “crunching numbers” not managing hospitals or cutting costs.

Officials said the plan would help “future-proof” the health system Picture: Adelaide Airborne Photography

An internal guide states the official review will:

IDENTIFY “multifaceted issues impacting SA’s ability to have the right skill mix in the right place at the right time”;

LAY “groundwork” for a care plan for 10 Local Health Networks, “driven” by modelling using population growth, treatment complexity, patient demand and digital trends;

DEVELOP attraction and retention strategies including in regional areas;

ENSURE workforce models of care “align” with various clinical strategies and plans;

CONSULTING with universities and training providers to consider the “changing nature of skills and roles”;

PROVIDE “linkage” to primary healthcare, integrated care models and the health networks; and

ADVISE best decisions over the next five and 10 years.

SA-Best Upper House MP Frank Pangallo said the review “has an odour of Korda Mentha about it”.

“SA Health is a bloated department, so it must be pretty bad if they need to bring in external consultants,” he said.

SA Salaried Medical Officers Association chief industrial officer, Bernadette Mulholland, said the government “needs to make a choice whether the future is about cuts or about investment in patient care”.

Critics said the plan was similar to when Korda Mentha was hired for $33m to solve the budget crisis at the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, which manages hospitals including the Royal Adelaide. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Morgan Sette

Opposition health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn said “a long review that’s already late won’t provide any certainty to frontline workers right now”.

She questioned why the government was “ignoring calls to offer workforce incentives to attract and retain staff like other states”.

Health Minister Chris Picton said it was a Labor election promise to “help us rebuild our overstretched health system”.

“The absence of this plan was a shortfall that was raised with us by clinicians, unions and colleges as a serious shortfall that needed addressing,” he said. “Our long-term workforce planning is all about identifying what staff to hire, when, and where.

“We know clearly this is about more, not less, staff.”

The SA Health spokeswoman said KPMG won a public tender to develop the plan to be released by year’s end.

“The detailed, complex, data-driven work of KPMG will help us further future-proof our health system, using expert modelling and projections to plan ahead,” she said.