00:00 Simone King has spent months waiting to have her gallbladder removed.
00:07 When she arrived at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for scheduled surgery on Friday, she was sent
00:12 home.
00:13 "I'm very concerned because I'm not the only one.
00:14 There's a lot of people who have got more problems than I have that need to be seen
00:18 to."
00:19 All elective surgeries, except Urgent Category 1 and Category 2 paediatric operations, have
00:24 been delayed by SA Health as it grapples with a system-wide Code Yellow, or internal emergency.
00:31 "I haven't called a Code Yellow before so I think it goes without saying that we thought
00:35 this was a very serious state we were in."
00:37 "What this suggests is that the whole of the system is now in crisis."
00:41 SA Health says respiratory illnesses are helping drive hospital demand.
00:46 At least 270 health workers are off sick with COVID, and more than 140 hospital patients
00:53 have COVID or the flu.
00:55 "We currently have 200 more patients in our hospital than the same time last year.
01:00 And that's a significant uplift for our system."
01:03 "The wait lists are very large and they just seem to keep growing and growing and growing."
01:08 As well as delaying elective surgeries, SA Health has opened all available hospital beds
01:14 and asked private hospitals to treat more public patients.
01:17 "Labour said they'd fix this.
01:19 They said they'd fix the ramping crisis.
01:21 They said they'd fix the hospital system and it has gone to pieces under their watch."
01:26 "There are hundreds of extra beds that are needed across the system and that's why we
01:30 are doing exactly that.
01:32 Would I like all of those beds to be available yesterday?
01:34 Of course I would."
01:35 It's not just metropolitan hospitals affected by elective surgery delays.
01:40 "People here are really isolated and they are already cut off from services.
01:44 So to have somebody in the city say, 'Well you can't have this as well,' just adds to
01:49 the woes of the country people."
01:51 SA Health says patients in need won't be turned away from hospitals, despite the internal
01:56 emergency.
01:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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