SUPPORT FOR MEDICARE URGENT CARE CLINIC STRONG

Federal Member for Macquarie, Susan Templeman, says there is strong support across the Hawkesbury for a new, free walk-in GP clinic which would shift people from using the Emergency Department for urgent but not life-threatening conditions.

Ms Templeman has launched a petition for a Hawkesbury Medicare Urgent Care Clinic which gained nearly 700 signatures in a week.

“A Medicare Urgent Care Clinic is a walk-in service, with no appointment or referral needed, and it provides bulk-billed, urgent care services,” Ms Templeman said.

“The Albanese Government committed to opening 50 of them around the country, but we’ve now opened 87 and I want Hawkesbury to be the 88th,” she said.

Ms Templeman said that since the closure of the Hawkesbury Hospital After Hours GP clinic, access to healthcare for urgent matters was much harder.

She acknowledged that the NSW Government had recognised the gaps and put support in place for better access west of the river through a phone-referral service, which she welcomed, but says the Medicare Urgent Care Clinics are a unique model.

“A Medicare Urgent Care Clinic (UCC) provides essentially a mini-emergency room, where urgent but not life-threatening matters can be dealt with,” she said.

“When you go to the one at Penrith, you walk straight past the general GP reception and go to a dedicated and specially trained Urgent Care receptionist. There are specially trained nurses and doctors on staff and, crucially, access to scans.

“There are no out of pocket costs, so it’s not dissimilar to what you’d experience in visiting Emergency, but without the wait.

“And if the matter is not something that they have the equipment or skills to deal with, patients will be transferred to an ED.

“Patients who have visited the Penrith UCC – based at Our Medical Home - have told me that the wait times were short, often only minutes, not hours, and that the whole experience was much less stressful than taking themselves or a child to hospital for something urgent that couldn’t wait for a standard GP appointment.

“During a recent visit to get an update, the Penrith UCC advised me that a wide range of illnesses and conditions have been treated there and that sporting injuries are among the most frequent reasons why people come to them, so it’s really saving parents time and money to have injuries promptly treated, without clogging up emergency departments.

ENDS