Mr ANDREWS (7:46 PM) —I rise tonight to hopefully draw attention to an important problem that affects many of our sick and elderly in nursing homes and hospi tals. In the last budget the government acknowledged the seriousness of injuries caused by falls for elderly Australians. In 1995 there were 60,000 hospitalisations because of falls. We know that these falls often lead to longer-term disability and do contribute to the high cost of health care overall in the nation. The government is therefore to be congratulated for contributing $6.6 million over four years to activities that reduce the rate of falls. These include training of health care workers and further research into the causes of falls and how to prevent them.

This matter was highlighted for me by one of my constituents, Mr Bob Burling, whose wife suffered three major falls after a cerebral haemorrhage and stroke and then a number of falls in a nursing home. This prompted Mr Burling, who is a retired engineer, to design something to protect his wife from further injury. I recently attended the local nursing home where Mrs Burling is, to see for myself this device which had been designed by Mr Burling. It is what he calls the CSAR system, which is short for Controlled Space Alarm Response, which controls the space around the bed at a certain level and width, above and beside the patient, by creating an invisible, noiseless, electromagnetic field which rings an alarm when any part of the patient enters the space in this field around the bed.

The CSAR system is made of economical, off-the-shelf components and can most easily be plugged into the hospital's alarm system, if it has one. It does not obstruct the patient in the bed or the movements of nursing staff—or others, for that matter, who are attending or visiting the patient. An ultrasonic sound scanner fixed to the head of the bed can adjust the space control to take account of the size of the particular patient. It is plugged into the hospital interface on the wall, where it has an electronic circuit. This interface goes to a panel beside the bed, and a light is activated beside the bed and outside the room where the alarm is located, along with the room identification for the particular patient.

If a patient is restless or distressed or sticks an arm or a leg outside the bed or through the space around the bed, the alarm will be activated, alerting the staff of the home that the patient is disturbed. The bell stops as soon as the patient moves back out of the zone of control of the device. If the patient tries to sit up or stand up or, for that matter, is leaning over the side of the bed where he or she could fall out, an alarm will ring in the alarm centre for the hostel or nursing home staff, immediately identifying which patient in which bed they should attend to.

The details of the device are, in one regard, unimportant, and I am not here wishing to tout for sales for a constituent: he in fact has refused to make these devices, despite being requested to do so by individuals, because he believes this is something that should be provided much more generally. The point of what I am saying tonight is to highlight the fact that the present duty of care for patients is something which we need to continue to attend to. Hospitals and nursing homes fulfil their legal duty by providing routine ward rounds but, in many regards, as we know, unfortunately more needs to be done. People who are frail and distressed but physically active can have falls at any time.

We have, in this design, which I have seen working and in operation, technology which can prevent falls in hospitals in a much better way than the bell system which is available at the present time. For example, Mr Burling's unit costs about $1,000 to make in its prototype form but, if it were made en masse, obviously the unit cost would be much less. It is not cheap at this price but, when you consider the cost to health care and all the subsequent costs when a fall does occur for a patient in bed, it is something which I urge the government to look into to see if we can do more in this regard—particularly when the technological expertise to make these sorts of workable devices is now readily available.