STEWART BRASH, HOST: Quick question for you. Have you ever used the Mparntwe Urgent Care Clinic? You know, it's the Northside shops. North Stuart Highway, here in Alice Springs. It opened about a year ago, with the aim of taking pressure off the ED at the Alice Springs Hospital. And yesterday, Federal Minister for Health and Aged Care Mark Butler is back in town, this time to announce three further Urgent Care Clinics, all in remote parts of the NT: Ali Curung, Lajamanu and Galiwin'ku. Mark Butler, good morning to you.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning.
BRASH: I think last time we spoke was when you were here for the opening of the clinic here in Alice Springs. Just tell us what's been proposed for these three remote centres, especially Lajamanu and Ali Curung?
BUTLER: Firstly, can I say the 2 clinics we opened in the Territory last year, one in Palmerston and the one here in Alice are performing terrifically well. Here in Alice, it’s seen about 13,000 people. They are open 7 days a week, available for walk-in appointments. Importantly, they're fully bulk billed. We gave all of the clinics across the country, there are now 86 of them, equipment grants so they've been able to buy an X-ray machine, they've got ultrasound, they've got ECG. Quite serious facilities with very highly qualified doctors and nurses working in there as well. They’re giving people somewhere to go when they need urgent care, as the name suggests, they can't wait for a few days to get into a GP. Your kid has fallen off the skateboard and broken their wrist, or Saturday afternoon sport. That's a really big thing. About 1 in 3 patients across the country going through these clinics are under the age of 15. They might have a very bad fever in the morning. At the moment, right across the country, including here in Alice, the only real option for people is to take their child or take themselves to the hospital ED and often wait for hours and hours as they get shuffled down the queue, while heart attacks and strokes and life-threatening emergencies come through the front door. They're working really well.
BRASH: Do you have any stats on, say, in the Territory, like the Alice Springs Urgent Care Clinic, Mparntwe Urgent Care Clinic, do we know how many people have been diverted from the ED at Alice Springs Hospital? Because that was the whole point, was to make sure that the load on the EDs was reduced. Do we have any stats?
BUTLER: We're starting to get these statistics; they are hard to get out of hospital systems right across the country. What we are trying to do was to draw away what the hospitals call 'non-urgent' or 'semi-urgent' category presentations, category 4 and 5 presentations. We're finding across the country where hospital systems are able to report, that either those presentations at worst are flattened while everything else is still going up, or in some cases, we're seeing them reduced by as much as 10 to 20%. Now, that doesn't mean people in hospital emergency departments are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Far from it. But at a time when there's enormous pressure on all of our hospitals, including here in Alice, it means that they can focus more on the life-threatening emergencies. It's also good for patients. It means they get seen in a timelier fashion. It's not a pleasant experience to take your young kid with a broken wrist on Saturday afternoon, or even worse, a Saturday evening to any hospital ED in this country, and spend hours and hours waiting to be seen, let alone treated. This has been a real success.
Now we've announced 3 more remote area Urgent Care Clinics that will take the number to 6 here in the Northern Territory. This was a proposal from the former Northern Territory Labor government when the Prime Minister put a bunch of money, about $1.2 billion on the table at a National Cabinet meeting, first of all, to help the flow of older patients through the hospital system, but also to expand our Urgent Care Clinic program. The Territory, said, we want to try a model in remote area clinics that is obviously unique in the country, and we're really excited to see how they roll out.
BRASH: Yeah, because it's quite interesting. So for instance, NT health will run the clinic I know at Ali Curung and Lajamanu. So, at the moment there is a clinic there. What will the Urgent Care Clinic capacity be then? Does that mean you'll just extend the operating hours of the standard clinic which is there, or will it be actually new facilities and new staff there? What's the model going to look like?
BUTLER: It's not going to be new buildings or new facilities. We're obviously wanting to expand the staffing arrangements, some changes to the models of care. There'll be drivers to help bring people into the clinic. The extent of the hours will really depend on how we can scale up workforce in areas that are not easy to get workforce.
BRASH: Which is the key thing, because, say, for instance, the clinic here in Alice Springs, I know there's been fly-in, fly-out medicos who have been staffing it. What will be the model in those remote areas? Because Lajamanu and Ali Curung are much more remote than Alice Springs, how difficult will it be to get extra staff, or are you just going to pay the current staff who are there extra hours to deliver that service?
BUTLER: I think we'll be doing that in the short term. They won't be the same staffing arrangements as happens in, the big towns or the cities with doctors. We'll be relying heavily on the remote area nurses. There will be drivers. I'm going to be frank, this is a new mode on top of an already new model of urgent care, which only really started to roll out across the country last year. We took that invitation or expression of interest from the Northern Territory Government that they wanted to try something new. As we were talking about before we came on air, part of the objective here is obviously to get patients better care, more timely, more efficient, more convenient care, particularly when they need it urgently. Also we want to take pressure off other parts of the system so that might be less aeromedical evacuation.
BRASH: Is that the objective to keep people in the community not having to fly to Alice Springs or beyond?
BUTLER: That's right. Certainly, in the big cities, the objective is to stop them having to go to the hospitals. In remote settings, it will be trying to take pressure off other parts of the system. I toured the MRaCC service at the Alice Springs Hospital yesterday, which has a terrific telehealth arrangement with a whole lot of those remote communities. Trying to support local health workers give care in the community to minimise the number of retrievals that have to be made to bring people off country into the Alice Springs Hospital. These systems are designed to be a win/win. They're supposed to be better for patients so you can get care in your community in a timely fashion, and also take some pressure off some of the more acute parts of the system.
BRASH: That suggests that you're also having to put in new infrastructure, because if you're going to deliver a service like we have in the Mparntwe Clinic, you'll need to have imaging machines, which maybe aren't there at the moment. So, are you also upgrading the medical infrastructure in these clinics as well?
BUTLER: This is a work in progress in the remote clinics. We want to see what they need and liaise obviously with the Territory Government. It's quite a unique part of our Urgent Care Clinic network but we're really excited to see how it rolls out.
BRASH: How soon before these new clinics are running?
BUTLER: They're running now. We opened 3 a little earlier. The 3 I announced yesterday, I'm told, are operating now. If they're not operating now, they'll be operating before the end of this month.
BRASH: Okay and so that means 7 days a week the clinics will be open now?
BUTLER: The hours will depend on how we can scale up the workforce and so I can't be definitive about that, but we'll have more information available about that as they open.
BRASH: Well, you've got a fan here from Paul. He says: 'Hi Brash, the Urgent Care Clinic here in Alice has been fantastic. Great service there when you need it.' So, there you go. I haven't used it but the feedback from people who have said they can avoid ED and as you said, the long waiting times at EDs.
Before I let you go, I just want to play you something. Now, you've been in town since yesterday, so you'll be obviously aware of the high levels of violent offending we've seen in our town in recent times. And in many ways, it could be seen as no different from what we saw in 2023, when the Prime Minister came in late June and made the announcements. And then, of course, the plan for Central Australia. I do want to play you something from Marion Scrymgour, your fellow MHR in the Labor Party. This is what she said to me on Friday about her sense of security in the town of Alice Springs.
MARION SCRYMGOUR, FEDERAL MEMBER FOR LINGIARI (RECORDING): I don't feel safe. Look, I agree with most women, you know, not just women, people in the town don't feel safe. I know how that feels, Stuart. I've said to people I don't feel safe in my home. I put a padlock on my gate because I'm in fear of wondering who's going to come through that front gate and break my windows and break in, which I've had. The feeling of that invasion is a terrible feeling, and no one should have to go through that experience.
BRASH: Marion Scrymgour talking about the current situation, how she feels about the town she calls home. Do you think your fellow federal parliamentarians, federal Labor Party members, understand the situation here in Alice Springs? Because even 2 years on from when the Prime Minister came, we're still talking about. In fact, I'd suggest people would feel less safe in their town than they did two years ago?
BUTLER: The first thing I'd say is that Marion is just as frank and just as articulate in Canberra.
BRASH: Is she being heard though?
BUTLER: When she talks in Caucus, when she talks to ministers like men and other ministers that have skin in the game in these portfolio areas. She’s just as frank, just as articulate and compelling. I spent a lot of time with her yesterday, really the whole day, talking about some of these programs but really talking more deeply about what is happening in Alice right now. There as the case of the baby girl who has been airlifted to my hometown of Adelaide. The situation here is intolerable. It is unacceptable that people do not feel safe in their own community and do not feel safe in their own homes.
BRASH: What scope is there for federal assistance? We’ve seen the $300 million, a lot of people go well what good does that make? The question is, what more can a Federal Government do when we have a town like Alice Springs, which is crying out going, we don’t know what to do?
BUTLER: I had a long discussion with the Chief Minister late yesterday about the 7 points that she has sent to the government, including to Senator McCarthy and to Marion. They will be talking with her separately later this week. I indicated to the Chief Minister that we were keen to do whatever we could reasonably do to support the Northern Territory Government in their job to keep the community safe.
BASH: Any of the 7 points did you see that you could act on?
BUTLER: I was able to give her an assurance, after talking with my colleagues earlier in the day, that we would be able to extend the CASA exemption for drones. A relatively straightforward matter we were able to action very quickly. A number of the other 6 points are more complicated. I’ve said publicly and I’ve said to the Chief Minister, we don’t think it is constructive to negotiate these points through the media, I say with the greatest respect. I’ve indicated, on behalf of the Prime Minister, a very strong willingness on behalf of the Government to work constructively and with haste about these matters. The Chief Minister and I have been in contact again this morning about setting up those arrangements. We want to do whatever we reasonably can to help the NTG keep this community safe and keep them feeling safe.
BRASH: There hasn’t been a feeling of safe in this town or many years. It has continued to erode. I’ll tell you as someone who has lived here for decades, it is very tough.
BUTLER: Marion has been an articulate advocate, as has Malarndirri McCarthy in the Caucus, but being here and talking to a range of organisations, as I did yesterday, going through the hospital in the morning, having a health forum, talking to a range of people form the community last night I very much got that sense. I’m talking to the Prime Minister about that as well.
BRASH: Would you recommend the PM come back to Alice Springs?
BUTLER: He’s not able to do that this week. He and I talked yesterday morning before I spoke with the Chief Minister. We’re very much engaged. As I said, I had a very long conversation with the Chief Minister yesterday. We’ve been in contact this morning, ensuring our governments at an official’s level, as well as a political level, are in contact at the highest possible level to work through those issues. We might have some issues as well that we want to rise with the NTG to help the situation here and in other parts of the Territory as well.
BRASH: Right across remote Australia I would suggest. Minister, thank you for coming in. We'll hopefully see some progress from those conversations between yourself and the Chief Minister and the federal government, between the CLP NT government. Thank you.
BUTLER: Thanks, Stuart.
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