TRISH COOK, LABOR CANDIDATE FOR BULLWINKEL: Good morning. My name is Trish Cook. I'm the Labor Candidate for Bullwinkel. It's a new federal seat involving the Perth Hills, the Foothills and rural areas. I'm very happy today to be with Mark Butler, the Federal Health Minister, Tania Lawrence and Brenda who is the owner of this fantastic facility in Midland. It's the new Urgent Care Clinic, fully bulk billed in North Street Medical Centre. As a nurse myself, who, in fact, used to work here, this facility is just what patients need. I've been talking to patients outside today who are just thrilled with the service. They're able to get in, get an appointment, take the load off the GPs and the emergency care and get treated fast. This is because of a Labor Government, and we need to strengthen Medicare, keep Medicare going and enable more of these clinics. This is one of eight clinics in WA with the eight to be opened very soon in Armadale, which is in the vicinity of Bullwinkel.
TANIA LAWRENCE, MEMBER FOR HASLUCK: It's wonderful to be here today at the Midland Urgent Care Clinic in the heart of the electorate of Hasluck, together with Trish Cook, the Candidate for Bullwinkel and the Federal Minister for Health, Mark Butler and Brenda, the proud owner of this wonderful facility, which has changed 10,000 lives already since opening in December last year, to receive that urgent care, rather than having to occupy the emergency clinics in the St John of God hospital nearby. At this clinic, one in three children are accessing this service. It’s open seven days a week and one in four patients are being seen on the weekends and a significant number are received care after hours. The extension of hours because of the increase in demand, this demonstrates the community are really happy with this service, making the most of it and taking the pressure off our hospital system. I thank the Labor government for listening to what the community were asking for and responding to it and to that Minister Butler.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you, Tanya. Thanks for welcoming me to your electorate. It's great to be here in Perth. I've been this morning at the annual conference of the College of General Practitioners, talking about all that we're doing to strengthen Medicare, and particularly to rebuild general practice after a decade of cuts and neglect to Medicare. I'm particularly delighted as well to be here with Trish. I first met Trish at the Melanoma Institute of Australia conference where she was presenting a paper as part of her nursing PhD. Her doctorate study is on home care for cancer care patients, and she had some terrific evidence to add to a conference of some of the best melanoma clinicians and researchers in the world here in Australia, a conference that was convened by Australians of the Year, Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer. We feel very privileged that Trish, with all of her experience in Medicare, has decided to put her hand up and contest the new seat, the new Western Australian seat of Bullwinkel for the Labor Party. Brenda, thank you for hosting us here, thank you as well for putting your hand up to take your general practice to the next level and be one of the network of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in Australia.
At the last election, I promised that we would open 50 Urgent Care Clinics. Yesterday, we opened the 78th Urgent Care Clinic on the Gold Coast in Queensland. That will be the second Gold Coast clinic servicing the area around the busiest emergency department in Australia, which is the Gold Coast University Hospital. And we know, as Tania said, these are making an enormous difference in the local communities. They're delivering timely, expert, urgent care to people in their own community, when and where they need it on a fully bulk billed basis. It's particularly good for families when a kid falls off the skateboard or gets injured in Saturday afternoon sport, they know really in a practical sense, the only alternative to something like this is going and spending hours and hours at the emergency department. Now at the conference, the Western Australian Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson spoke before me, and she told the GPs conference that our Urgent Care Clinic network has already seen their category four and five presentations to their local hospitals - that is the less urgent emergencies or non-life-threatening emergencies - those presentations have started to decline in Western Australian hospitals. We're seeing this right across the country, particularly where Urgent Care Clinics are located in a particular hospital area. Category four and five – semi-urgent, non-urgent – presentations to the hospitals are starting to decline, sometimes by around 10 per cent. Not only are people getting great care at these clinics in a much more timely fashion, fully bulk billed, we're also managing to start to relieve a bit of pressure on hospital emergency departments, which we know are under strain from life threatening emergencies coming through their front door.
DR BRENDA MURRISON, CEO AND MANAGING DIRECOTR, MIDLAND MEDICARE URGENT CARE CLINIC: I should start just by saying how grateful we are to have an Urgent Care Clinic. It's universally loved by our staff. Our clinicians love it. It allows all our clinicians to work to scope: they love the medicine they see. And the patients, of course, are delighted with the service as well. It's been an absolute win here for everybody involved. It's been great for the community, and it's been great for all the staff involved. We really have no problem staffing it, because people want to work in an Urgent Care Clinic because they enjoy it. It's great for everyone.
JOURNALIST: Brenda, what are some of the common things that people present for at these Urgent Care Clinics?
DR MURRISON: It's a massive variety of things that people present with. It can be just simple, cough, cold, tonsillitis. We do have a triage policy. So we do not see things that can be done very easily in general practice - it's just a step above that. It's all the things that we love to deal with. So, it might be diverticulitis, it might be a kid that's fallen and has a broken arm. It might be somebody who needs a plaster cast. It's a really large range of everyday occurrences that need not quite an emergency department, but urgent attention.
JOURNALIST: And how aware is the community of these urgent care clinics? Are you still seeing people go to hospitals for matters where they should be coming here?
DR MURRISON: Some people will mix up where they're meant to be from time to time, it just happens. So we will occasionally get an appendicitis that needs to go to the hospital from here. So maybe once in two days, there'll be a patient will need to be transferred to the hospital. But I'm sure the hospital will say the same, that they get patients that probably should have seen us. So it happens, but as more people become aware, it will happen less often.
BUTLER: We’ve worked really hard to ensure that there are clear protocols between local hospital systems in every state and territory, and ambulance services and the urgent care clinic network. So everyone's clear about what sort of presentations should be treated here, and what obviously need to go to hospital. So Brenda's experience is replicated right across the country. Of course, there are some people who present here, and actually after examination, are more serious than they might have thought, and are transferred to hospital. Equally, there's a bit of traffic from hospitals to Urgent Care Clinics as well. But the level of cooperation here in Western Australia with the hospital system, the state government, the ambulance service, as we've been building the Urgent Care Clinic network, has been absolutely top notch.
JOURNALIST: Healthscope has today torn up its contracts with Bupa and about 30 other health insurers, it’s suspected 6 million Australians will be affected. What's your reaction to that?
BUTLER: I'm deeply concerned about this. There are a number of other insurers involved here, but essentially, this is an ongoing negotiation between the second largest hospital operator in the country and the second largest insurer. These are big, sophisticated, foreign owned commercial operators who, of course, undertake these negotiations in a robust way, seeking to maximise their own interests. But I want to remind them all that they are able to continue their commercial operations underpinned, essentially, by taxpayer support and a lot of hard-earned money provided to them by their members, in their case of the insurance company. So they've got to get back to the table. They've got to recognise that, yes, they have their commercial interests, but their overarching objective should be to settle this thing, to fix the dispute, and ensure that patients get the sort of service they can reasonably expect given the hard-earned money they provide to this system.
JOURNALIST: Will you or the government be involved or mediate in any way yet?
BUTLER: At the end of the day, we don't involve ourselves in the usual course in commercial negotiations, in health or in other parts of government. These are two sophisticated commercial entities that are obviously in a big arm wrestle about a negotiation. I expect them to do that in a way that has patient interests front of mind. Simply walking away from the table, tearing up a contract, which is pretty unprecedented in the private health insurance and hospital sector, as I'm advised, is very much not in the interests of patients. And I expect them to get back to the table and fix this.
JOURNALIST: Healthscope says they need to do this to remain viable. I mean, you understand this sector, do you see that as being true?
BUTLER: We've had a very constructive process over the last several months, stewarded by the Secretary of the Department of Health, involving Healthscope and other significant hospital operators, health insurers, but also clinicians and patient groups as well, to work through some of the challenges around viability of some parts of the private hospital system. Now I expect that constructive approach to continue. Governments put resources and energy into it, and other stakeholders have been constructive as well. There are some short-term options that I would like those groups to consider in the next little while, to see whether that can improve the viability of existing arrangements. And obviously there might be some longer-term reform ideas as well. But in the meantime, they've got to work to the interests of patients. There are a lot of patients out there who sign on to Bupa, who might be expecting to receive support in a Healthscope hospital, particularly given how large the Healthscope footprint is, and those patients interests must be front of mind for all of the commercial entities here.
JOURNALIST: Thank you. And just finally, what do you say to those millions of people who are going to have to figure out a solution here? I mean, presumably this will cause some chaos. What do you say to Australians in that position?
BUTLER: They've been put in a really invidious position by these commercial entities, I have to say. And I completely understand a sense of shock and a sense of frustration from people who have put their hard-earned money into a system that, frankly, serves the interests of some very big commercial operators, often owned by entities from overseas. So those entities need to get back to the table and fix this. As I understand it, some notice has to be provided, so if this does end up eventuating, which I hope it doesn't, it wouldn't be for a few months. So this is not going to happen tomorrow or next week. This is going to happen, as I understand it, into late February or early March. But I urge these companies, in the ensuing days and weeks, get back to the table and fix this thing.
JOURNALIST: Minister, should United Workers Union State Secretary Carolyn Smith, stand aside from her duties at the Union while the allegations against her are being aired out?
BUTLER: I've only seen that one media report about this. It's before the courts, as I understand it. It's strongly contested as I read the report, and I've only seen one media report, so I'm not going to comment on that. It should progress through the courts if that's where it's currently located.
JOURNALIST: This is not the first allegation against the union. There have been other bullying allegations. Is that quite powerful, influential union, dysfunctional?
BUTLER: All I've done is read one media report this morning. I'm not going to comment on it any further, particularly given the subject of some court proceedings.
JOURNALIST: Do you have any concern that this is distracting from the important work UWU does on matters like childcare and aged care?
BUTLER: They have been a really important partner this union. It's a big union. It represents many, many tens of thousands of aged care workers, early childhood education and care workers, and they've been an important partner as have employees in the area, in some of the enormous aged care and child care reforms that we are pursuing. We have lifted wages to those two groups, because we know that with better wages, we are going to improve recruitment and retention in those two critical care economy sectors. In aged care, I can tell you, this is already reaping benefits. As I go around aged care facilities, they are finding it much easier to recruit and to retain nurses and carers in this sector that is growing so fast.
JOURNALIST: Could I just get the Member for Hasluck on a question. Would you like to see the Prime Minister rule out a march election, given that the impact that would have on the state poll?
LAWRENCE: I’m really enjoying getting out and about in Hasluck, door knocking, meeting with my constituents and speaking to the policies that we are delivering in response to the matters that are important to them. So, the election will be sometime the first half of next year, and regardless, I've got a lot of work to do and enjoying it thoroughly.
JOURNALIST: Would that be a snub to WA and a front to WA if the PM does call it and force us to change our state election date?
LAWRENCE: People within Hasluck are concerned with matters that they're focused on. They're not interested in the machinations of when politicians determine election dates. It will be, when it will be. What they're concentrating on is what response the government is delivering for their issues and their concerns. On that front we have absolutely delivered significant policies around cost of living, around free TAFE, around aged care reforms and we've got a Liberal Opposition that has delivered nothing but opposition to those policies. Thank you.
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