Across Australia, Medicare Urgent Care Clinics are being established to offer patients an alternative to overcrowded emergency departments. These clinics provide quick and accessible healthcare, often open late and on weekends, aiming to reduce the strain on hospitals.
NORMAN HERMANT, REPORTER: Just the words emergency department can be enough to strike fear into anyone who needs medical treatment. Not a week goes by without more reports of ambulances ramping and hospitals swamped, patients spending hour after hour waiting.
NORMAN HERMANT: Across the country thousands of patients are being seen every day in these Urgent Care Clinics.NORMAN HERMANT: They are open late, often till 10 at night and on weekends - and they’re bulkbilled. NORMAN HERMANT: Medicare Urgent Care Clinics were a campaign promise from Labor in the 2022 federal election. The Government has committed $720 million to open and run 75 clinics across the country. Another 12 clinics are scheduled to open by the end of the year.
We know from clinicians that there's still a lot of deferred acuity in the system because of COVID when people weren't getting the care that they needed for other non-COVID conditions. So pressure is going to remain in hospitals for some time. DR MATT NIGRO, BALLARAT URGENT CARE CLINIC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as we're seeing about 50 a day, and 1500 patients a month, and 70 per cent of those would have otherwise presented to the emergency department significantly changing the outcomes for patients, but also taking the pressure off what is already a very, very pressured emergency department.
HOSPITALOVERCROWDING URGENT CARE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AUSTRALIA
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