New South Wales and Victoria governments will each establish free urgent care clinics to reduce pressure on hospital emergency departments. Almost 25 urgent care clinics will be established with extended hours to ease the pressure.
The Victoria premier, Daniel Andrews, and NSW counterpart, Dominic Perrottet made the announcement about the clinics. They had a joint press conference in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Free clinics will run in partnership with GPs
The people are facing issues and the premiers of both states attribute the decline in GP bulk billing for exacerbating record demand. The free clinics will run in partnership with GPs to provide care for mild infections, burns and fractures.
Daniel Andrews said, “We know that because people can’t find a free bulk-billing doctor, the only free place to go for many is to go to the hospital, or perhaps wait [for care] longer than they would prefer to wait and their condition gets worse and worse,”
The two systems are working against each other
Perrottet said that the federal government is in charge of primary care whereas states are responsible for running hospitals. However, the two systems are ‘’working against each other.’’ He further added, ‘’ We are not here to pass the buck and shift the blame to the federal government but we need to work on reform.’’
The NSW and Victorian governments will ensure more support for bulk-billing GPs. They will make sure there’s less pressure on our public health system. Perrottet said that simply investing money will not fix it. We need to look for new ways of handling and doing things.
He further added, “Every state health system around the country and around the world is under pressure. That is only natural, particularly in circumstances where we’ve come through a one-in-100 year pandemic.”
