Health Minister fronts hospital after ‘sh*t-show’ claims
SA’s health minister condemned a new aged care bottleneck record amid reports of spiralling staff sickness and “depressed” doctors at his local hospital.
Health Minister Blair Boyer condemned news today that 502 elderly South Australians were “stranded” in the state’s public hospitals waiting for an aged care bed – the most in the state’s history.
Boyer visited Modbury Hospital this morning to condemn the aged care backlog – choosing the same hospital that a medical union called unsafe and distressing for doctors in a new report.
In a report lodged with SafeWork that emerged this week, SA Salaried Medical Association chief Bernadette Mulholland said doctors called the hospital “a daily shit-show”.
The union reported doctors were depressed, “overwhelmed” and under-resourced, with sick leave spiralling and “absenteeism high”, according to a workplace inspection that took place on September 30.
Liberal health spokesperson Jack Batty said the accounts were “shocking”.
“Doctors and nurses are doing everything they can, but they’re being asked to deliver care in conditions that are simply unacceptable,” Batty said.
At the time of the report, Modbury had 76 patients in its 34-space emergency department, with 22 patients waiting for a hospital bed.
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SafeWork SA found the report did not breach work health and safety standards.
Health Minister Blair Boyer said today that he takes the report about the hospital “really, really seriously”.
“SafeWork conduct their investigations at arm’s length and independently of government, and that’s for a very good reason,” Boyer said.
“I don’t think any South Australians would want when it comes to SafeWork matters, the Department for Health investigating the Department for Health or the Department for Education investigating the Department for Education.”
“We understand that staff are under pressure. This is my local hospital. I’ve been to this ED. It is busy, and staff are working hard.
“We always look at reports like that and say what can we do to better support our staff who are obviously working in difficult, high-pressure situations, and I might say, doing a bloody amazing job at the same time in difficult circumstances.”
Meanwhile, Boyer said the aged care backlog was an “unacceptable” strain on SA’s public hospitals at his visit to Modbury Hospital today, joined by Council on the Ageing Chief Executive Miranda Starke and the daughter of a 93-year-old dementia patient, Tanya Doulton.
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“The reality is if these 502 elderly patients were found a Federal Government aged care placement it would free up the equivalent of all the inpatient beds at the Lyell McEwin Hospital,” Boyer said, pointing the finger at his national counterparts.
Treating aged care patients who are ready to be discharged from SA public hospitals has cost $123.7 million in taxpayer funds in the financial year 2025-26, according to the state government.
Doulton said her father needed 24-hour care, and had been in hospital now for over four months.
“Imagine what that’s like. He hasn’t seen fresh air, hasn’t seen sunlight. He hasn’t been outside of the hospital, tiny little room for four months, and I have contacted every aged care in Adelaide, and there’s no beds available,” she said.
“We’re basically waiting for someone to die before one bed becomes available, and then there’s hundreds of families trying to get that one bed. This is disgraceful. My poor dad deserves better than this.
“What Australia is doing to our elderly is disgraceful. It needs to be better. A hospital is for sick and injured. My dad’s not sick. He’s just simply old. He doesn’t deserve to be here.”
Starke said the numbers were “alarming, but we can’t forget that behind every number is a real person whose life is on hold right now”.
“There is only so much that the state health system can do and more urgent action is needed by the Commonwealth to fix the aged care system.”
Meanwhile, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler was in Adelaide opening a new Estia Aged Care centre in Findon this morning, a two-storey facility with 124 beds.
Butler has been forging ahead this month with a bill in federal parliament that would free up $3 billion in aged care funding by removing private health insurance rebates for over 65s – a move opposed by the Coalition and the Greens.
He has previously said he was “focused particularly on this bill and on my portfolio, and I think in a portfolio where everyone understands there is increased demand, particularly in aged care, at a time where baby boomers are starting to enter their 80s, hard decisions need to be made”.
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