New Royal Adelaide Hospital has no provision for accommodation for families of rural patients
The new Royal Adelaide Hospital has no accommodation for families of rural patients, who have been told they can share a room or stay at private accommodation nearby.
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THE over-budget new Royal Adelaide Hospital will lose more than $1 million a year in revenue by not offering on-site accommodation to regional families visiting loved ones.
A Freedom of Information document reveals the residential wing at the current RAH tipped more than $1.1 million into the hospital’s budget in 2015-16. But the residential wing, which allows up to 47 outpatients and their families to stay from $28 a night, has been axed from the new $2.3 billion hospital.
Instead, the Health Department said family members would sleep in day beds in the same room as the patient “where appropriate” or could stay at nearby private accommodation for “less than $100 a night”.
Chaffey MP Tim Whetstone, who represents the Riverland, said the FOI figures showed the affordable accommodation was popular and without it, many regional families would do it tough.
“People don’t appreciate how hard and complex it is to come from a regional area to the city and not have family support,” Mr Whetstone said.
“If they can’t afford to come down without that accommodation, will patients forgo their medical intervention, tests, or operations because they can’t incur the cost to come to Adelaide?”
The FOI document, obtained by the Opposition, shows the accommodation, also used as university living quarters, raised $6.5 million in revenue over the past five financial years.
“This is a revenue raiser of over $1 million a year that the Government will have to find elsewhere,” Mr Whetstone said.
But Central Adelaide Local Health Network chief Len Richards said revenue went to the residential wing’s operating and maintenance costs.
