Using figures supplied as part of the plan, Rural Doctors Association South Australia has found Country Community ‘hub’ Hospitals, including Murray Bridge, will be ‘dangerously above the clinically-recommended 85 per cent bed occupancy rates’.

RDASA vice president and Murray Bridge Doctor Peter Rischbeith said the findings were of “critical concern”.

“If Health Minister John Hill reckons rural South Australian will have increased access to health care under the proposed County Health Care Plan, he must be using a different type of calculator than we are,” he said.

While some State Government figures used in the plan are widely considered incorrect, as investigations by The Standard have confirmed, Dr Rischbeith said it was “important to base our calculations on the Government’s own figures to show just how ill-thought-out this plan is”.

Country Health South Australia Incorporated (formerly Country Health SA) chief executive officer George Beltchev said some figures in the plan had been amended. “They’ve been drawn from a database, but adjustments need to be made in some locations to update the data available,” he said.

But he emphasised this was only in “three or four” locations, and that crucial information in the plan was correct.

“The critical figure, which is the actual occupancy of [acute] beds, is correct,” he said.

The RDASA analysis also found there would be an additional 2,835,045 kilometres travelled each year by patients, 5,258,929kms travelled by friends and relatives for a single visit, and $2,456,866 in additional costs for ambulance fuel and officer time.

But Mr Beltchev said “the conclusion to reach on modelling is determined on the assumptions made to create it”.

“If you make the assumptions that beds will close [in GP Plus hospitals], then this is not the right assumption,” he said.

“The majority of locations will be maintaining current services, and the general assumption is there will be a reduction in the length of travel required.”