Minister for Health and Aged Care, doorstop – 1 August 2024

DR EVAN JONES: Today is a wonderful day, it's another day that sees the progression of our minor accident illness clinics to becoming part of this wonderful federal initiative that have Urgent Care Clinics across the country. Our congratulations to the Government to taking up this initiative. It's proving a wonderful facility and a wonderful service to patients, within this region, but I know across Australia, and allowing people to be able to access care where they live, and in a timely fashion, and particularly to take the demands of our emergency departments, which we now are under pressure. This is a very important initiative by the Federal Government. We also want to congratulate the government on making good with its election promises back in April 2023 and now we see the progression into the Urgent Care Clinic program.

Over the last 15 months or so this clinic has lived about 45,000 clinical services to urgent care patients in the region. Over 60 per cent of those patients say that if we weren't open, they would have presented to the emergency department of the local public hospital here. We pay thanks to the ambulance service, because we've certainly been accepting large numbers of ambulance patients within this facility. That goes to helping with all of the issues that we know, are occurring with the increasing demands for our ambulance service. But most of all, I want to pay thanks to the community which have supported this facility so much, and who rose up to ask government to support this facility and what we are trying to do within the community. We know that this is a successful model. We know that this has a great future within Australia. I want to thank very much the Minister and the Government for allowing us to be part of the urgent care program. With that, I might just pass over to a Minister Mark Ryan out local state member here.
 
MARK RYAN, QLD MEMBER FOR MORAYFIELD: Thank you very much. Thanks to Minister Mark Butler for being here and a big shout out to the Albanese Labor Government for this initiative. I've been on a journey with Evan for almost 15 years now where Evan identified this site, a former hardware shop, to deliver a new model of healthcare for our community. Evan started doing this before it was nationally popular. I think it's only right that Evan’s initiative and the great team that are here providing outstanding health services to our community are now formally part of the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic network. This is a network which provides free universal, high-quality healthcare to members of the community. It makes a difference. It's available after hours. As a parent, we've got a couple of parents here with some young people who have used this service. I've used this service. I only live around the corner. When you've got a sick child, sometimes all you need is someone to have a look at that sick child in that moment to say everything's going to be all right. This service does this. Evan, to you and the team, thank you very much for being here being available but for the high quality, bulk billing, free universal healthcare that you provide. It's well received by the community. And to the Albanese Labor government, this is only possible because of their financial support to ensure communities like the ones here in the Morayfield/Caboolture region are able to access those services. To Minister Mark Butler and the Albanese Labor Governments thanks for the contribution you’re making to providing high quality healthcare for people of this region.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thanks, everyone, for coming along in this utterly beautiful weather, I can't tell you how cold it is down in the south. It's a pleasure just to get some sunshine. But it's a particular delight to be announcing that this exemplar, really of urgent care in Australia is going to join the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic network for the country. We went to the last election promising to strengthen Medicare. We’d been told in particular that general practice was in its most parlours condition in the 40-year history of Medicare.

That promise really had three pillars to revive bulk billing, which is why we tripled the bulk billing incentive in the budget last year. Since then, we've seen bulk billing rates for GP consults climb in every state in every territory across the country. Last month alone, there were 900,000 additional free visits to your GP, because of the changes that we made to go bulk billing incentives last year.
We also promised cheaper medicines and literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been saved by patients in their medicine costs, which is good for that hip pocket in a cost-of-living crisis, but it's also good for their health. Because we know that high medicines costs mean that too often people are going without the medicines that their doctors have said is important for their health.

The third pillar was this Urgent Care Clinic network. I really want to thank Dr Jones for the discussions we had in the lead into the 2022 election. He has been one of the national innovators, one of the exemplars in this area. He explained to me along with his terrific clinicians, doctors and nurses that have been working in this space for a while how there was a gap in the Australian healthcare system between a standard general practice on the one hand, and a fully equipped hospital emergency department on the other. We talked about other countries, we usually compare ourselves to including New Zealand that have quite developed mature Urgent Care Clinic networks that are making a real difference to those communities. And as evident, Mark said taking real pressure off local hospital emergency departments. Evan’s advice was a big reason why we promised 50 Urgent Care Clinics at the last election and last year, we were able to deliver on that promise, indeed with 58 Urgent care clinics that have already seen 600,000 patients through them. Every single one of home has been fully bulk billing. These clinics are open seven days a week, about one in three of the patients going through these clinics are under the age of 15. Like Sebastian and Tamara here who have joined us with their mums. It won’t surprise people when you think about this that often that activity peaks on Saturday and Sunday with weekend sport, with kids getting injuries on the sporting field, falling off their skateboards or their bikes. And their parents say, as Evan said, if these clinics weren't available to them, they would be spending hours and hours waiting at the local hospital emergency department. Instead, they're in here, they're seen very quickly. Evan says the median waiting time here is just 12 minutes before you're starting to be seen. And often, you're seen, you’re treated within an hour or a couple of hours at most. I'm delighted that this clinic, which we also invested in as part of our election commitments in the 2022 election, will join the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic network. A big reason for that decision is the conversations that I've had with Shannon Fentiman, the Queensland Health Minister, when we went to state governments with a $1.2 billion investment to strengthen Medicare for the National Cabinet meeting last December that the Prime Minister and the premiers had. Minister Fentiman said that one of the priorities she had was for further urgent care clinics in her state. We've already announced a second one for the Gold Coast region to take pressure off the busiest emergency department in the country down in Gold Coast. But she also indicated to our government that she wanted to see Morayfield join the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic network such is its reputation, and such is the level of difference health care in this part of Brisbane.

One of the other lessons that I think we really learned in our discussions with Evan, and Mark Ryan has talked about this, is the importance of the close connection between a clinical like this on the one hand and the local ambulance service and the local hospital. That advice was a big reason why we put such a focus on ensuring we had those operational protocols in place to ensure that patients were ending up in absolutely the right space, depending on the level of their acuity. We've taken that model right around the country. It is terrific to see it working so well here to have QAS represented here today, and also the local provincial hospital management representative as well. I want to thank Evan for his leadership, not just leadership here, but national leadership in this area, all of the doctors and nurses and other health professionals who are working in this clinic, in particular, but I also want to thank Sebastian and his mom for coming out to talk to me and others about the experience he's had here. And Danielle and Tamara, who have used this clinic as well, a couple of times, they've got a great level of service, they're great advocates for this clinic. We might actually hear from Sebastian, who's going to do his first press conference at the age of 11 and talk a bit about what happened to him and the level of service he's got at this local clinic.
 
SEBASTIAN: I burst my elbow at a birthday party at a trampoline park and they treated me so fast. I was back in action in no time. I’m now able to move my arm. It’s amazing.
 
BUTLER: Sebastian is about to get his black belt in karate. He was delayed in his assessment he was able to do because of his elbow but now he’s able to do.