Source: Australia Government Statements 2
Michael Clarke, ABC North Queensland Breakfast Host: You can go and visit your GP if you’ve got one, if you can get a booking with your local GP clinic, or maybe you go to the emergency department at the Townsville Hospital, which is always a very busy place. What about the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic? It’s been around for a little while now, and perhaps it’s a place that you have gone to and had your issues seen to. How much of a permanent focus are they going to be for our healthcare going forward? Let’s ask that question this morning to someone who’s in town to take a closer look at the clinic, and that is North Queensland based Labor Senator, Nita Green, who’s with us this morning. Senator, welcome back to the show.
Senator Nita Green: Thanks for having me.
Clarke: What role does an Urgent Care Clinic play as opposed to an emergency department?
Green: Well, over the last two years, the Townsville Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has seen 35,000 patients here in Townsville, so it’s playing a really big role. And these clinics were established really to fill that gap between seeing your regular GP and going to the emergency department. We know that quite often, particularly after hours or on weekends, you might need to see a doctor quickly, but it might not need the quite urgent care of emergency department. And so we established these Medicare Urgent Care Clinics to take pressure off EDs and to make sure that people could get free care when they needed it the most.
Clarke: Do you think the community knows about them after two years? Because I know the emergency department at Townsville Hospital is always pretty busy.
Green: It is really busy. And in 2023, more than 35% of presentations to the university hospital were non-urgent or semi-urgent care, which is extraordinary really. So the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has been brought in to fill that gap. And I know that our health services here in Townsville work really closely together to make sure that people are being sent to the right place. Over the last couple of weeks, the average of patients being sent to the urgent care clinic has been 285 per week. So definitely getting a lot of people through the door. And we’re getting people being seen quickly when they need the care, but they’re not taking up a spare seat in the emergency department, which was why it was all designed to do this.
Clarke: These clinics they have their own dedicated staff or are they being staffed by other doctors across the city?
Green: No, they have their own dedicated staff and in particular nurses. So there’s nurses on site as well because they often perform procedures like stitching you up or giving you a cast if you’ve broken your foot. So it’s a really holistic workforce and it’s fantastic to see people being given the opportunity to work in these types of environments. I know they’re very popular with doctors and nurses because of the type of care that they provide. And that’s why our government’s made a really important decision during this budget about the future of Urgent Care Clinics.
Clarke: Gordon in Townsville’s just sent through a text saying he’s been to the one on Thuringowa Drive. “I’ve been there once. Overall, good experience, much similar to going to a large GP clinic. And it was bulk billed,” which he says was good. So Gordon giving it the thumbs up there. So that is an interesting point, Senator. We know the budget might be tough coming out next week. Will the money be there for these clinics to continue?
Green: Well, you’re right. This will need to be a really responsible budget, but a responsible budget has to include cost of living relief for Australians and making sure that we do have health services that people need, particularly in regional areas. And so we’ve already announced that the budget will contain funding to make Medicare Urgent Care Clinics open and free permanently. And so over the next five years, that will include $1.8 billion to ensure that these clinics, which started out as a pilot program, will now be a permanent feature of our health system here in Townsville and across the country.
Clarke: Do we need some more for the north? Are there other locations where one should go?
Green: I think at the moment we’ve got a good balance between the clinics that we have here and across regional Queensland. I just recently opened the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Mackay. So Mackay had been waiting a long time to get their clinic. So we’ve progressively made sure that each big regional town does have access to an Urgent Care Clinic. We’ve got one more that’s opening in Caloundra by the middle of the year. And at the moment, we haven’t announced any more locations, but I know that they’re incredibly popular, and so we’ll always keep an open mind to more locations in the future.
Clarke: I guess this morning, Senator Nita Green speaking to us ahead of the budget next week, which is being brought down. Of course, there’s a lot of concern about what’s going to be in or not in that Budget, Senator. How concerned are you that North Queensland, that regional areas in particular, might be hard hit by some of the spending measures or the savings measures that the Treasurer keeps talking about?
Green: Oh, look, I think this needs to be a responsible budget. We know that the conflict in the Middle East is having a huge impact on people’s households and household budgets, and that is why we are making sure that we’re delivering savings across every single department and agency in the government. But at the same time, we know that this budget needs to provide that support for people when it comes to cost of living relief. And so we are working really hard to make sure the budget brings down inflation, but supports people through this difficult economic time. We know that people are under pressure and that hasn’t been helped at all by the conflict in the Middle East and the jump in fuel prices. And so you’ll see a budget that will reflect making sure we are helping people, but managing a budget for the economic times that we are living through.
Clarke: And Senator, just before we let you go, I understand you’ve got something else you’ll be doing today popping along to have a closer look at NQ SPARK, the North Queensland Simulation Park. What are you hoping to get out of that visit today?
Green: Oh, it’s really exciting actually, and this is a project we’ve been working on for many years, and I don’t want to take the thunder of the team there at JCU, but we’ve reached an important milestone with NQ Spark today. We’ve been working to make sure that this project could move along and go ahead and play an important role in our defence here in Northern Queensland. And so we’ll be bringing people together to give people an update of where we’ve gotten to with the project, which is really exciting because this was something that was really innovative at the beginning and that the Albanese government backed the project with $32 million. It’s been a hard slog from people here who just saw a vision and wanted to deliver it. And today we’ll be opening the door on the new facility.
Clarke: Well look forward to seeing how that goes. Senator, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Green: Thank you for having me.