New SA Health boss wants more staff, says ambulance ramping times are unacceptable

SA Health’s new chief executive has revealed her three immediate priorities after taking over the job – and says she needs more staff.

SA Health’s new chief executive Dr Robyn Lawrence says the public should not accept the current record ambulance ramping times, ED wait times stretching beyond eight hours or people being stuck in EDs for days.

She believes SA Health’s workforce of 45,000 needs to be expanded, wants to work within her budget – which in 2021-22 was set at $7.3bn but has blown out to $8.2bn – and concedes frontline staff are exhausted.

Asked if, apart from frontline clinicians, SA Health’s workforce of 45,000 was too many, she said: “I don’t think 45,000 is too many” but they need to be in the right places, adding “I would find it hard to believe at the minute that overall we are overstaffed.”

Dr Lawrence also:

WANTS to “manage the budget to what we’re allocated” and will argue with both the Commonwealth and the SA Treasury for “realistic” funding;

SAYS SA Health is making headway in clearing the 3200 elective surgery overdue waiting list;

NOTES a range of sites are being considered for the new WCH – without confirming if further down Port Rd is one – and does not have a preference on whether it should be split into separate facilities;

THERE needs to be a balance between maintaining the existing WCH without overcapitalising.

Dr Lawrence, 52, has held multiple senior executive positions in WA Health and started on a five-year, $653,000 a year contract to run SA Health on September 12.

She trained as a medical doctor, specialised as a medical administrator, has never previously worked outside Perth, has sons Alex, 23 and Lachlan, 21 and is married to oncology pharmacist Michael who will stay in Perth and regularly fly to Adelaide.

Dr Robyn Lawrence, the new SA Health CEO.

In a wide-ranging interview Dr Lawrence named three major priorities.

“Ambulance ramping and the reduction of that and improving access for all South Australians is the number one of those,” she said. “Sitting behind that is the commitments around new infrastructure and additional workforce because without those things, we won’t be able to achieve our goals and objectives.

“The final thing is how we harness the workforce to deliver that. Essentially, we’ve got a really fantastic team here in South Australia from the ones I’ve met so far, the power of all of those teams working together is how we will make a difference for the community.”

Having only just started, Dr Lawrence said it was too early to put a time target on the promise to “fix ramping”.

“But I think it’s really clear the government and the community expects us to fix this as quickly as possible, recognising we have had Covid, we’re now coming out the back end of that,” she said.

“Staff are tired and haven’t had a break for a long time. So we’ve got to work within all of those parameters to improve.”

Dr Lawrence will attend her first ramping task force meeting next week and said: “I’ll have much greater clarity following on from that of what sorts of timelines and targets we will set ourselves”.

She conceded delays in EDs – multiple hospitals have had average wait times to be seen of more than eight hours this month – was crucial to easing ramping.

“I don’t think any part of the community would think it’s acceptable to wait that time and certainly as the leader of the South Australian health system don’t think it’s acceptable for the community to be doing that,” she said. “I acknowledge we have to do better.

“The key to fixing access to our emergency departments is really the back end and moving patients through the system in a streamlined way.”

Factors from alternatives to ED, preventive care, better access to aged care or NDIS placements for patients are part of the puzzle.

Dr Lawrence noted ramping “isn’t a scenario unique to South Australia. It is probably a global issue right across the world. So we are all going to have to look differently at how we do things and the solutions we’ve done in the past might not be as effective this time.”