Why the SA health system needs to build a new culture, as well as new hospitals

BOBBLE-head politicians huddling for photo opportunities as Jay Weatherill announces money for hospitals. The health system needs much more than that, writes BRAD CROUCH.

THERE must be an election in the air — smiling politicians huddling for photo opportunities as Jay Weatherill announces money for hospitals, all nodding like bobble-heads as the Premier spruiks Labor’s generosity.

These same politicians have been overhauling the health system, downgrading three emergency departments among plans for $1 billion in cuts under Transforming Health over four years.

Promises so far this week include some window dressing at Modbury which the AMA dismisses as “an election sweetener”; another pre-election rebuild pledge for the QEH; and cash for overstretched EDs at FMC and Lyell McEwin where ambulance ramping and working above capacity is now routine. There will likely be a new Women’s and Children’s Hospital announced - again. The world-class RAH will finally open in September.

But Labor’s new love of hospitals — apart from the Repat whose life support will be switched off in December — can’t patch over the bungles in the health system.

The stroke deaths at the RAH while two key specialists were on leave; the chemo underdosing and prostate cancer scandals — all revealed by The Advertiser — are among a litany of disturbing cases. Now add the medical imaging system fiasco to the list.

The government doesn’t hold press conferences to announce these sorts of things.

Quite the reverse — there are concerted efforts by the bureaucracy to bury such blunders, to the point the families of two men who died from stroke at the RAH wouldn’t have known there were no specialists trained to suction blood clots from the brain on duty if not for The Advertiser’s investigation.

Coroner Mark Johns would not have known either, and made his anger at SA Health’s secretive tactics known in a scathing public statement when demanding full details after reading The Advertiser.

The bobble-heads can nod at promises but big spending on buildings must be matched with an even greater focus on fixing a health system culture lurching from crisis to crisis with deadly consequences.