Parliamentary inquiry investigates Yorke Peninsula health services, after 10,000 signature petition demands change

Patients waiting on a hospital floor and a 90 year old woman being asked to vacate a hospital bed at 3am are just some examples of the struggling health system.

Patients waiting on a hospital floor, staff working 16 hours a day and a paramedic servicing a hospital due to a lack of doctors highlights the Yorke Peninsula health system under strain.

A parliamentary inquiry into the region’s health services has received numerous examples of inadequate care and calls for the urgent expansion of the 21-bed Wallaroo Hospital.

More than 80 written submissions have been made including details of an elderly man who was being treated for constipation only for his persistent pain to be a ruptured bowel.

In other examples, a 90-year-old woman was asked to vacate her Wallaroo Hospital bed at 3am due to demand and mothers and their newborns were roomed with infectious patients.

Independent MP for Narungga Fraser Ellis said these first-hand stories were needed to achieve a significant upgrade to the hospital, as population increases.

Independent MP Fraser Ellis. Picture: NCA NewsWire

“Wallaroo is funded as a 21-bed hospital but the beds from the co-located private hospital, which closed in the last few years, are still being used so that’s evidence in itself that funding needs to be increased,” Mr Ellis said.

The inquiry is investigating the classification of Wallaroo Hospital and whether Port Pirie Hospital should be removed from the Yorke and Lower North Health Service.

It was prompted by a 10,000-signature petition calling for an overhaul and for Port Pirie to be moved into the neighbouring Flinders and Upper North network.

The Port Pirie Health Service sits within the Yorke and Lower North Health Service. Picture: Dean Martin

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation wrote Wallaroo was the central hub for birthing, radiology and surgical interventions but staffing levels had not improved.

Examples included three nurses having to look after 15 patients on the ward and surgery staff working up to 16 hours a day.

In 2023-24, Wallaroo Hospital had 106 births, 3360 acute patient admissions and 9878 emergency department presentations – an increase of 12.6 per cent on the previous year.

One respondent wrote nursing staff “soldier on as always” but faced daily pressures.

“The people of southern Yorke Peninsula are sick of being treated as second class citizens simply because we are out of sight and out of mind, both geographically and politically,” she said.

Yorke and Northern Local Health Network, in a submission, wrote the Port Pirie Hospital provided clinical and corporate leadership to the health network and removing it would hinder expertise and remove complex specialist services, forcing patients to travel further.

The state government previously said the local network’s budget had been boosted more than $28m a year, 13 more paramedics had been hired and nurse graduates would double to 48 positions.

The inquiry will hold public hearings at the Yorketown and Wallaroo town halls on Thursday and Friday.

Originally published as Parliamentary inquiry investigates Yorke Peninsula health services, after 10,000 signature petition demands change