The Gawler Health Service will gain an additional 16 fully functional beds while the Lyell McEwin will increase its bed numbers increase by 24.
The increase in bed capacity was announced on Friday as part of Labor’s commitment to significantly boost resources to the health sector to tackle the ramping and health crisis the state is currently facing.
The announcement has been welcomed by local Member of Parliament, Mr Tony Piccolo who said the additional local beds are part of Labor’s fully costed and funded plan with 300 extra hospital beds, 100 extra doctors and 300 extra nurses, across the health system.
“The additional beds will provide additional capacity to treat more patients, and enable patients stuck in emergency departments to move to a better setting for recovery and rehabilitation,” said Mr Piccolo.
“The additional hospital beds will free up blocked emergency departments, enabling flow of patients through the hospitals. This will allow paramedics to transfer patients into EDs as soon as they arrive at hospitals - and stop ramping of ambulances, and subsequent delayed responses to emergencies.”
Mr Piccolo said under the Marshall Liberal Government, we now have the worst ambulance ramping in South Australia's history. In 2021, ramping was 485% worse than just four years ago before the Liberals came into government.
“The bottom line is Labor can make more investments in health than the Liberals because it is scrapping Steven Marshall’s $662 million inner-city Basketball Stadium and instead investing the money in health,” Mr Piccolo said.
Labor has now announced 242 additional hospital beds, and 20 more drug rehabilitation beds and 20 more mental health community beds, with at least 60 more hospital beds to be announced. The new beds investment announced so far represents $331 million in capital and $201 million in recurrent expenditure.
SA Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas said only Labor has a comprehensive plan to help fix the ramping crisis and deliver the best health services right across South Australia.
Shadow Minister for Health & Wellbeing Chris Picton said the Liberals have spent most of their time in office with corporate liquidators trying to cut hospital beds and make frontline staff redundant – and that’s led us to extreme bed block in hospitals and caused the ambulance ramping crisis.