Resuscitation and trauma rooms at the new Royal Adelaide Hospital are not fit for purpose, creating risk for patients, the incoming South Australian government says.
SA's new health minister Stephen Wade says SA Health has informed him the new state government that the rooms in the $2.3 billion hospital are too small.
"In the short term, minor structural modifications in two of the resuscitation rooms involving repositioning and relocating equipment are being undertaken to improve the ability of the RAH to deal with level one trauma," Mr Wade said on Sunday.
"But the advice makes clear in the longer term the creation of two larger resuscitation-trauma rooms must be considered.
"The modification of two existing rooms would require major structural work, involving architects, engineers and builders at a substantial cost to taxpayers."
Mr Wade said it was extremely disappointing that just six months after the new Royal Adelaide Hospital was opened the incoming state government would need to assess the need for major modifications.
The RAH is one of the two major trauma services designated to care for South Australia's most severely injured patients.
It provides emergency, trauma and critical care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, treating approximately 1800 trauma patients each year or about 70 per cent of the state's major trauma cases.
The hospital is also a major trauma referral centre for Alice Springs and can take patients from other parts of the Northern Territory along with western Victoria and western NSW.
