A New urgent care clinic where a child with a high fever or someone with severe lacerations or a suspected broken bone can be taken will open soon in the City of Wanneroo.
Yesterday the Albanese Government announced that Ocean Keys Family Practice in Clarkson has been given approval to operate a Medicare urgent care clinic.
Medicare urgent care clinics open for extended hours, seven days a week and offer walk-in care that is fully bulk billed and provide treatment for non-life-threatening injuries and illnesses such as closed fractures, simple eye injuries, minor burns, a urinary tract infection or ear infection.
Federal Health and Aged Care assistant minister Ged Kearney said the Medicare urgent care clinic was designed to take pressure off hospitals, such as the Joondalup Health Campus where more than 40 per cent of presentations were for non-urgent or semi-urgent care.
When making the announcement Ms Kearney, Rural and Regional Health assistant minister Emma McBride and Pearce MHR Tracey Roberts said the new urgent care clinic was due to open in August.
Ms McBride thanked Ocean Keys Family Practice owner and general practitioner Tim Koh for taking on the clinic on behalf of the community.
Ms Roberts said the urgent care clinic would be appreciated by families in the area.
During the 2023-24 May Budget, the Australian Government announced $358.5 million over five years from 2022-23 to establish 58 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics (Medicare UCCs).
WA Primary Health Alliance chief executive officer Learne Durrington said the urgent care clinics were an important element of the primary care system as general practice and hospitals were really feeling the pressure as people suffered from winter ailments and the leftovers from Covid.
“The important feature is not only is it urgent care of a really high quality but people can be referred back to their own GP following that urgent care presentation,’’ she said.
“It’s really important for people to keep their relationship with their GP.’’
Dr Koh said he thought they would be seeing things like respiratory illness, injuries, sporting injuries, accidents, stitches – things that people often turned up to their usual doctor and really struggled to get an appointment because a lot of doctors now were booked one to three weeks in advance.
“True emergencies such as chest pain, real difficulty breathing, severe accidents they’re definitely things that are (still) going to have to go to hospital,’’ he said.
“We have capacity here to see them and triage them and get them to hospital but I think in lots of ways in those settings call an ambulance and expect to go to hospital.’’
He said the urgent care clinic would see people as they walked in – there was some capacity to book people in but the general practice would be side-by-side with the clinic and run as normal.
“(In the clinic) we will see them, assess what needs to be done and then integrate them back to their usual general practitioner.’’
He said the urgent care clinic would have three consulting rooms and probably a range of doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners.
But he said there was a journey to go on with the public about letting them know what was urgent and what was an emergency.
This article appeared on Yanchep News Online on 9 June 2023.
