Less than half of the government’s promised clinics have opened

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Less than half of the urgent care clinics promised by the federal government have opened months after the policy was meant to be delivered. The clinics are meant to provide bulk billed, after-hours medical care in regional and metro areas.

Transcript

00:00 Australians are often looking for places to get care, particularly in the out of hours

00:06 periods. So this policy provides another option for Australians to get the care they need

00:12 in the time they need.

00:14 What about how it's turned out in practice?

00:16 Well, often we find ourselves robbing Peter to pay Paul when we put new services in place.

00:23 We need to have a better way of managing a health workforce to ensure that services can

00:28 hit the ground in a timely way.

00:31 Is communication with the public also an issue?

00:34 Yes. So what counts as urgent for you and I may not be what's considered a great case

00:41 for an urgent care centre. How do I know whether I should be going to an urgent care centre,

00:46 ringing nurse on call, seeing an emergency department, calling an ambulance? There are

00:51 lots of options, particularly in the big smoke. So Australians are really calling for more

00:56 clarity. They want to know which services are available and can see them. They also

01:00 want to understand how to make that decision. Where should I go?

01:05 And what have you heard about how these clinics are being run at the moment, how effective

01:10 they are when they are open?

01:13 We've had some feedback from Australians who have used these clinics, who have described

01:17 them as life saving, fantastic, being able to go somewhere, see someone, perhaps a child

01:24 with a spawning injury who might need a cast or some stitches from someone who cut themselves

01:29 in the kitchen. So Australians who find and use these services seem to be pretty happy

01:35 with them on the whole.

01:37 But the labour supply is an issue. Is it the case that there just aren't enough doctors

01:43 at some of these services?

01:47 So in order to get these services up and running quickly, we're piggybacking them off existing

01:52 services like your local general practice. That means that we're asking the staff that

01:58 are already working to perhaps work extra hours or relying on that service to be able

02:03 to recruit new staff. This is challenging. And as I said earlier, we really need some

02:08 smart solutions to managing this health workforce puzzle we have at the moment.

02:14 Would you like to see this policy fulfilled and the 50 clinics opened?

02:18 Absolutely. I think Australians would want to see 50 or even more in the future so that

02:24 they know that they can get care that they need in the after hours period. But they also

02:29 want to know when I should be going to this service and when I should instead perhaps

02:33 be calling an ambulance or waiting for the next day to see my local caregiver.

02:38 And so what do you make of the government's intent with this policy and how would you

02:43 rate its delivery so far?

02:47 Well it's still early days and as I said, we are piggybacking this on to existing services

02:52 in order to have it happen quickly. It's hard to get a new service up and running, particularly

02:58 in this time post the main phase of the COVID pandemic where our health workforce and our

03:04 services are really pushed hard to deliver. So all in all, I think it's a good effort

03:10 but we're hoping to see more in the near future.

03:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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