An $86 million program to end ramping and overcrowding at Adelaide's southern suburbs hospitals was "poorly conceived and implemented", with the situation getting worse in recent months, a new independent report has found.
The previous Liberal government completed the southern health expansion plan (SHEP) in August last year, which included an increase of 30 new emergency department beds at the Flinders Medical Centre, along with increased capacity at Noarlunga Hospital and the Repat Hospital.
But an independent report by emergency department physician Mark Monaghan found ramping is now higher than before.
"There was a view that an ED expansion would solve performance issues including ramping," Dr Monaghan found.
"This was never going to happen in the absence of inpatient reform."
The report found staff members' views were not taken into account when the expansion plan was developed.
"Due to the nature of the process, the models of care were developed to fit the expansion and not the other way round, as should always be recommended," Dr Monaghan found.
"I have observed an ED workforce chronically traumatised by the processes and dynamics that surrounded them, further exacerbated by the recent SHEP initiatives."
The investigation was commissioned by the previous government before the election, with the final report handed to the new Labor government in recent days.
It has 19 recommendations, including the development of new models of care, increased weekend staffing and changes to the emergency department configurations.
Health Minister Chris Picton said he has accepted all the recommendations.
"I think it takes a special type of incompetence to spend $86 million on a program you say is going to fix ramping in hospitals and actually make the situation worse," he said.
"The key critique that we raised at the time, that is borne out very clearly in this report, is that expanding emergency departments alone, and particularly at the cost of closing other beds in hospitals, only makes the situation worse."
An unnamed opposition spokesperson said in a statement that challenges at the Flinders Medical Centre were revealed in a similar report in 2012 but Labor “didn’t lift a finger in six years.”
“In contrast, the Marshall Government invested hundreds of millions expanding hospital services and improving patient flow,” the statement said.
The latest ramping statistics show that after a drop in ramping in January, they have skyrocketed.
While in February the number of hours lost to "transfer of care" had fallen to 1,522, by March it had risen to 2,712 hours.
Mr Picton said the dip at the beginning of the year was not an indication of the success of programs like the southern health expansion plan but was actually due to the cancellation of elective surgery.
"When you do cut elective surgery, there is a decrease in ramping, very clearly," he said.
"What we had before the election was [former premier] Steven Marshall and [former health minister] Stephen Wade saying, 'oh, look at January and February statistics, aren't we great, we've reduced ramping', but they had a ban in place on almost all public and private elective surgery at that time."
Mr Picton said as well as adopting the report's recommendations, the government is also working on its election promises of adding 300 beds across the health system and increasing the numbers of nurses and doctors.
