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GPs to staff 50 ‘urgent care services’ in NSW and Victoria
The bulk-billing clinics will be established near existing hospitals with the aim of easing pressure on overburdened emergency departments.
Victorian and NSW Premiers Daniel Andrews and Dominic Perrottet announced the new clinics at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre. (Image: AAP)
The Victorian and New South Wales Governments will each establish 25 urgent care services in partnership with GPs in an effort to ease record demand on the states’ emergency departments.
According to an announcement made by Premiers Daniel Andrews and Dominic Perrottet, the services will operate for extended hours and be well equipped to handle conditions such as mild infections, fractures and burns. Patients, including non-Medicare card holders, will not be charged for services provided at the clinics.
‘Trying to find an after-hours GP who bulk bills has never been harder,’ Premier Andrews told reporters at a joint press event at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre.
‘Because people can’t find a free bulk-billing doctor, the only free place to go for many is to go to the hospital, or perhaps wait [for care] longer than they would prefer to wait and their condition gets worse and worse.
‘Instead of complaining about it, we’re doing something about it.’
The RACGP has responded positively to the news, with President Adjunct Professor Karen Price saying it is beyond time that state and federal governments work together to create one health system.
‘There is a great deal of patient suffering when health is used as a political football and this plan signals an end to that,’ she said.
‘This initiative begins implementing one of the aims of the primary health care 10-year plan.
‘It makes sense for state governments to recognise the critical role general practice plays and the ability to work in the acute care and after-hours space, which is traditional territory for GPs working at full scope.
‘The RACGP looks forward to the evaluation of these clinics and to work on the concept of the “one health system” to create a seamless care journey for patients in need.’
Professor Price also called for the establishment of similar schemes to be make provision of this type of care available to every general practice in Australia.
‘This level of care should never have been defunded in the first place,’ she said.
‘Further, a nationwide investment would enhance the evidence-based continuity-of-care model as we know most patients prefer to see their usual trusted GP.
‘The lost decades of insufficient investment in general practice care have never been more evident than during a pandemic.’
Meanwhile, RACGP Victoria Chair Dr Anita Muñoz said it is encouraging that state governments are becoming more involved in primary care, but cautioned that general practice still needs greater support.
‘We have been clear that practices must not be made financially vulnerable through their participation in these programs, and that urgent care clinics are not for delivering usual care that is best delivered by a patient’s own GP,’ she said.
‘States [funding] general practice activities indicates an understanding that innovative solutions to problems affecting our health system, including flexible funding arrangements, will be the way to provide the right health services to patients in the right place at the right time.’
The new services will be commissioned in partnership with Primary Health Networks, with locations determined following consideration of population, community needs and emergency department demand.
As part of the package in Victoria, 10 centres will partner with hospitals in Frankston, Bendigo, Casey, Albury–Wodonga, Dandenong, Latrobe, Werribee and Box Hill, as well as at Austin Hospital and Alfred Hospital. These are in addition to five other sites revealed last week, while a further 10 Victorian locations will be announced ‘soon’.
Meanwhile, NSW has recently established partnerships with GPs and Primary Health Networks in Western Sydney, the Murrumbidgee, Northern Sydney and Western NSW.
A joint release issued by the NSW and Victorian governments said the locations of future urgent care services in NSW will be delivered where there is ‘greatest need’, based on the demands experienced by hospital emergency departments, including where services can be scaled up quickly.
While the new partnerships are limited to NSW and Victoria, Premier Perrottet said states and territories across Australia have been under similar pressure to find long-term solutions to the ‘emergency care crisis’.
‘We’ve seen in [NSW] over the last 10 years a 30% increase in presentations at our emergency departments and that is not a unique experience, that is happening around the nation,’ he said.
‘Here is an opportunity for two state governments, the largest states in the country, to work together in a space that’s not traditionally ours.’
At the beginning of her term, RACGP President Dr Karen Price called for reforms to address what she identified as dysfunction in Australia’s healthcare system between state/territory and federal governments, while she also recently called for ‘integrated systems’ to help bridge the divide.
However, the college has also expressed wariness in the past regarding urgent care clinics, due to the potential for them to duplicate and fragment care, and advocated for any new services to be built on existing infrastructure.
A model established in 2019 by the West Australian Government involving more than 130 existing general practices was hailed at the time by RACGP WA as an ‘excellent solution’, while Tasmania has also drawn praise for a system that sees select clinics receive $150 from the state government for each patient it treats and keeps out of the hospital system.
These developments are in addition to priority care clinics backed by the South Australian Government, while an extension for state-funding for after-hours clinics in Tasmania has recently been confirmed.
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