DAN COX, PRESENTER: To tell you more, Shortland MP and Federal Minister Pat Conroy joins you now. Good morning, Minister.
CONROY: Good morning. How are you?
COX: Well, thank you. What can be treated at these urgent care clinics?
CONROY: Non-life threatening conditions. So, things that you definitely need to see a doctor about but don't justify an emergency department visit. So this announcement is all about making it easier to see a doctor – especially a bulk billing doctor – and also relieving pressure on the emergency department at local hospitals, especially the John Hunter where nearly 40 per cent of presentations to the emergency department are for semi-urgent or non-urgent matters. So this is about free access to doctors, but also making the emergency departments work faster as well.
MARCHANT: How do you make sure that this clinic isn't overwhelmed with people who just can't afford to spend $90 to see their regular GP?
CONROY: Well we're very clearly saying that this is a service that's available for everyone to use, especially if you don't have a doctor or you've had trouble trying to find a bulk billing doctor. We're putting record investments into lifting bulk billing rates. We've tripled the bulk billing incentive. We're getting a lot more doctors to the area, and that is beginning to have an impact. But we recognise that some people still have enormous difficulty seeing a bulk billing doctor, and this Medicare Urgent Care Clinic will obviously assist people in that manner as well.
COX: And these clinics aside then, what are you doing to make it more affordable for everyday Australians to see their regular GP?
CONROY: Well, so this is a very significant announcement, and it fits into a network of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics including one at Lake Haven and one at Cessnock. We've restored funding and saved the GP Access After Hours service that provides bulk billing GP visits out of hours and extended hours throughout our region. We've tripled the bulk billing incentive which is beginning to turn around bulk billing rates. So we're paying doctors more to bulk bill. We've increased doctors salaries so that they have less of a justification to charge patients, and we're delivering a huge increase in the number of doctors. You get more doctors into the area, that means that it's more likely that they will bulk bill, and I think last year we almost doubled the amount of doctors being trained in Australia, and we've also made it faster and quicker for doctors from the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand to come over and practice in Australia. So we're putting everything into this because we know after cost of living, access to affordable healthcare is the number one priority for people in our region.
MARCHANT: What is the difference then? You raise GP Access After Hours. What's the difference between this clinic and a GP Access After Hours clinic?
CONROY: Two significant differences. One, no appointments are needed or this one, it's a walk-in clinic. The GP Access After Hours service, you go through a triage service. I've used this with my family a couple of times where you talk to a registered nurse first and they work out effectively - you talk through the symptoms and they might say ‘well that sounds very serious, get to the emergency department’, or they might say ‘that's something that you can wait a few days and see your normal doctor’, or they'll make you an appointment at one of the five clinics. That's the first difference.
The second difference is the hours that they operate. So Urgent Care Clinics typically operate between 8am and 7pm on weekdays, and 9am and 7pm on weekends. So they're extended hours and they do great service. The After Hours service are there from 6pm to 10pm on weeknights and 1pm to 8pm on Saturdays and 9am to 10pm. So really there's a bit of crossover, but principally it's about the appointments process and secondly, if it's late at night, we want you to get to an After Hours service rather than a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.
COX: If it fits into those hours, and the Charlestown centre will be those typical Urgent Care Clinic hours?
CONROY: Well, it's still being negotiated with the practice owner, but the hours I've quoted are from the Lake Haven practice and they're pretty typical of what's around.
MARCHANT: Pat Conroy is here announcing a new Medicare Urgent Care bulk billed Clinic for Charlestown. Part of the aim of this is to take the pressure off emergency departments. How are you assessing their effectiveness in doing that? How will we know if it meets that aim?
CONROY: Well that will ideally present itself in fewer presentations to the John Hunter emergency department. So the 20 clinics across NSW have had 140,000 visits since they've been established, and a significant share of them are sure to have been diverted from local emergency departments. I've heard anecdotally that the one at Lake Haven has reduced pressure on the Wyong emergency department, and we've also seen the inverse happen. So, when the last government cut the Mater clinic and reduced the hours at the GP Access After Hours service, we saw a big spike in presentations to the emergency department. So it will relieve pressure on them, and the clinics are typically seeing between 300 and 500 patients a week, so they've been very successful.
MARCHANT: Beyond anecdotal and observational though you are - are there statistics being gathered that will help you decide whether or not to, for instance, build more of these in the Hunter?
CONROY: Well this round was actually established through negotiations with the state governments where they effectively identified emergency departments that were seeing a lot of non-urgent cases and then agreeing that we would establish a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic near that hospital to relieve that pressure. So this one's been selected because it's near the John Hunter and because almost 40 per cent of ED presentations at the John are non-urgent or semi-urgent. So, that will guide the practice going forward, and we're working closely with all the state governments who have responsibility for the hospitals and the emergency departments to make sure the two systems support each other. Because in the end, Australians don't care who provides it. What they want is good, quality, affordable healthcare, and that's what the Albanese Labor Government's committed to.
COX: Minister, thanks for your time.
CONROY: Thanks. Have a good morning.