Doctors DOUBT urgent care clinics will ease pressure on ERs

New pressing care clinics received’t compete with present practices, the well being minister insists as employees shortages proceed to plague Australia’s medical sector.

Expressions of pursuits are being searched for the operation of seven centres in Western Australia designed to take stress off emergency departments.

The Albanese authorities is planning to open 50 bulk-billed clinics throughout the nation and expects to have three Perth-based services open by July.

It comes amid calls from state and territory leaders, who will focus on a report by the Medicare job drive at Friday’s nationwide cupboard assembly, for the Commonwealth to offer extra hospital funding and improve rebates.

Health Minister Mark Butler stated the pressing care clinics would keep open till 10pm and alleviate pressures on hospitals by catering to walk-in sufferers.

“The cases that are going to come to an urgent care centre are going to be dealt with somewhere,” he advised reporters in Perth on Wednesday.

“They might not be life-threatening emergencies but they are emergencies that have to be cared for, either in an existing GP practice, or more likely in a hospital emergency department.”

Some medical doctors would possibly cut up their shifts between common observe and pressing care, he added.

“What we’ve been very clear not to do is to build new clinics that will be operating or setting up in competition with existing practices,” he stated.

Australian Medical Association WA president Mark Duncan-Smith solid doubt on whether or not the clinics would make a considerable distinction to hospital bottlenecks.

“They may have the unintended consequence of actually putting local GP practices out of business,” he stated.

“The walking wounded-type patients that will go to urgent care clinics are already seen very quickly in emergency departments … they don’t take up beds, they don’t cause bed block and they don’t cause ramping.”