Winter Demand Plan

Our hospitals are busy year-round, but during the winter months, we see more people needing hospital care, often with complex health needs.

In addition, older South Australians are experiencing the longest waits in the nation for aged care placement.

This presents challenges for our hospitals, including longer wait times in emergency departments (EDs), delays in accessing inpatient beds, and extended hospital stays.

In 2024, our public hospitals faced unprecedented demand, including a surge in respiratory illnesses such as Influenza, COVID, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which significantly impacted hospital capacity.

Already this year we have more people becoming unwell with Influenza and Pertussis (Whooping Cough) than last year, and we expect this to increase.

Depending on the level of demand and severity of seasonal respiratory illnesses, we anticipate the need for an additional 100 to 150 beds this year.

The Winter Demand Plan 2025 (PDF 3MB) sets out the plans to manage demand this winter, through delivering a range of initiatives under four priority areas:

  1. Keeping well in the community - Promoting preventative health and wellbeing.
  2. Getting the right care, in the right place, in the appropriate time - Including optimising use of alternative care pathways.
  3. High-impact interventions and increased capacity - Including care models and additional bed capacity, to meet increased demand.
  4. Our people - Supporting the wellbeing, capacity, and retention of our workforce.

These priority areas are underpinned by principles to support a sustainable plan:

  • Demand forecasting: Using data insights to anticipate demand, we can better allocate resources for planned and unplanned care.
  • Additional capacity: Implementing strategies to increase system capacity, including extra beds.
  • Workforce planning: Ensuring we have the right staff coverage and the workforce is supported.
  • Collaboration and communication: Strengthening partnerships and communication to improve patient care and system coordination.
  • Learnings: Continuously improving our response and preparing for the future.
  • Monitoring and evaluation: Tracking and assessing our strategies to ensure they are effective and adaptable, using data-driven insights, collaboration, and strong partnerships, to drive improvement.

Every individual in our healthcare system, from ambulance officers and nurses to doctors, allied health professionals, administration, and support staff, work tirelessly year-round, especially during periods of high demand.

We appreciate their dedication and commitment to providing the best possible care to our community.