Minister Ryan Park was in Orange this week to speak to healthcare professionals about “significant challenges” across the region.

Transcript

00:00We face some very significant challenges in our health care systems right now,

00:04particularly in our emergency departments. We've seen in the cross the

00:08orange emergency department about a 6% increase in presentations at this

00:13emergency department. What we are doing to try and alleviate some of that

00:18pressure is work through the single front door, an opportunity for people to

00:22access health direct, very important number on that 1800 022 222

00:28when it's not an emergency. Now why is that important? That's important because

00:33we've got real challenges in primary care in our communities and the further

00:36we get away from larger populations the more acute those challenges are. Over the

00:42last two days I've seen, discussed and listened firsthand to some of the

00:46stories about the pressures that a lack of GP access is having for people out

00:51in the Central West and that means that they're often forced to go to their

00:55local emergency department to access care. What we're trying to do as a

00:59government through a significant investment of around about a hundred and

01:03eighty million dollars, investing significantly in those services that sit

01:08behind health direct so that when people call that number they're able to be

01:12patched through to a clinician, a nurse practitioner, a mental health consultant,

01:17a specialist, an allied health care professional and see if we can actually

01:22avoid that trip to the emergency department. Now that is critical for a

01:26number of reasons. Critical because our emergency departments are not funded in

01:30a way to be able to take that pressure but critical also because we want to get

01:35people access to care in the most efficient and effective way possible and

01:40what we see now in our emergency departments including here in Orange in

01:44the Central West is people presenting who are sicker and the triage scores

01:49closer to two and three. Now they're sicker often because they haven't had

01:52access to primary care in the community. That's a challenge here, it's a

01:56challenge across every local health district. For the first time we've also

02:00invested significant money around a hundred and seventy odd million dollars

02:05into our GP payroll tax relief to make sure that those GPs who are bulk billing

02:12don't get punished with that sort of payroll tax burden that can be put

02:17on them. We need to do what we can as a government to ensure that primary care

02:23remains as robust as possible but I need the federal government to be blunt to do

02:28its bit and to do more because we can't do our bit and our emergency departments

02:33can't continue to function if we have a failing primary health care system and

02:37that is absolutely critical that we get that in place. Now these discussions that

02:41I'm having with the health ministers across the country as well as with our

02:46federal health minister Mark Butler are important and ongoing. We haven't landed

02:51on the federal health funding agreement yet. The deal is not good enough. I'm

02:55going to continue to go into bat and one of the reasons I'm going into bat so

02:59hard is for regional, rural and remote communities because the further we get

03:04away from those large populations the more acute and problematic that lack of

03:09GPs has and the impact it has on our local community.