SENATOR HELEN POLLEY:
(inaudible) but it's good for our community. And I want to acknowledge the doctors for taking up this challenge, I think it’s fantastic. And it's another example where good government is one that will work with the state government, as well as the federal government. So it's great to be here with Minister Collins and, of course, Minister Michael Ferguson. And so this is exciting. It's delivering on the Albanese Labor Government's promise that we made during the election campaign. It will be the first centre, of course, here in Launceston that's going to open, which is good news. I know I can't say, as a Tasmanian Senator, but it's great news for Northern Tasmania because we know only too well that unfortunately here in Tasmania we have some of the highest rates of chronic illnesses in the state. So having this primary care of health care that is going to be accessible with the support of the federal government and Medicare is really good. So I'd like to hand over now to Minister Collins.
JULIE COLLINS:
Thanks, Helen. It's great to be here with Senator Polley, but also with our state partner. This is about state and federal governments working together to deliver urgent care clinics across Tasmania. We are pleased as a federal government to announce with the state government today that this will be the first Urgent Care Clinic up and operating in Tasmania, the first of four. It will be up and operational from the 31st of July. So to everybody out there that wants to come in, this is a walk up clinic from 2pm to 8pm, seven days a week, funded by the state and the federal government, particularly though from the federal government in terms of our urgent care clinics that are around the country.
We are delivering 58 urgent care clinics around the country – four here in Tasmania, and the Launceston Medical Clinic here in Launceston will be the first of these urgent care clinics in Tasmania. We do hope to have the other three up and running by the end of the year, and I certainly as a southern Tasmanian also hope to have some announcements around the Hobart clinic in coming weeks and months. So this is great news for Tasmania, but particularly for the north of the state today. As Senator Polly's indicated and I'm sure Minister Ferguson will talk more about this, this is about getting people who don't need to go to emergency clinics in to get non urgent and semi urgent care, rather than them ending up in emergency departments. This is about taking pressure off the hospital system, but also recognising just how hard it is to access a GP.
All everybody will need when they turn up at this clinic is their Medicare card. It will be bulk billed through your Medicare card. There will be no other charge. You just need your Medicare card when you access this urgent care clinic here in Launceston. I'll hand over to Minister Ferguson.
MICHAEL FERGUSON:
Thanks, Julie. Good morning, and thanks very much to Dr Muir Wilson – who’s our eyeline here? Yeah. Thanks very much, Julie, and it's great to be here together. And thank you very much to Dr Muir Wilson and his team here at the Launceston health hub as the practice manager. And it's a delight to be here because it's the case that we need to do everything we can to support affordable and accessible health care here in Tasmania. The federal Labor party in the lead up to the election promised three urgent care clinics for Tasmania. Fortunately, through our health performance and health design, we'd already commenced some of the design work here and the landscape was perfectly poised for a partnership with the Australian Government when the Labor Party was elected federally. And our model with our funding now that we've decided to coinvest together $2.7 million of Tasmanian taxpayers money into a model means that we get not three but four centres here in the state ‑ a better design and a stronger partnership, and it means that we're able to open the first of the four here in Launceston on the 31st of July.
We couldn't be more happy with the working relationship with the Australian Government, and Tasmanians do expect that their politicians will put politics aside, work together for the interest of our community. That's exactly what's happening here. And with the Launceston General Hospital just a couple of 100 metres away from this particular site, the co‑location angle is a very positive one as well for patients that ultimately may need some hospital level care. But equally there will be patients who will be advised that ‘your non‑life threatening but still urgent or painful condition, you could be supported down the road at the urgent care centre, why don't you go down there, you'll be bulk billed’. So, this is about providing the right care in the right place at the right time. We're really pleased with the partnership and I just want to say, since the Premier is on leave at the present time, our premier who's our Health Minister has worked very hard on this with Minister Mark Butler on the Australian Government side and I think Tasmanians can be looking forward to enjoying these new services, and in many cases, in many cases, getting the care that they need in a more timely fashion. So they're my comments. Both of us, all of us are happy to take questions as required.
JOURNALIST:
Julie, if I could ask of you, you just said that you hope to have the next three up and running by the end of the year. It seems my understanding was that these were due closer to the middle of the year, around now. Is it your understanding that the other three have been delayed a bit because of contract negotiations or?
COLLINS:
Well, as I said, this is a partnership with the state government. We're working with the state government to deliver them as quickly as possible. Michael and I were actually just talking earlier, we hope to be able to say things in coming weeks about more clinics in Tasmania ‑ particularly in southern Tasmania ‑ but certainly we anticipate that the clinics, all four of them will be up and running before the end of the year.
JOURNALIST:
Will the same provider be running all those clinics?
COLLINS:
They'll be different in different locations. The negotiations are happening, different people have been for them. What we want to do is deliver the best health care we can for Tasmanians in partnership with our health professionals, and with the two tiers of government.
JOURNALIST:
How does the breakdown work then? What's the federal government's role in this?
COLLINS:
We're obviously funding urgent care clinics right across the country. For 58 clinics, that's $493 million I understand over the next five years. So it's a significant investment from the Commonwealth Government. This comes on top of our tripling of the bulk billing incentive. What we want to do is rebuild and strengthen Medicare. We can't do that overnight, it's going to take time. But this is the start of one of the first urgent care clinics here in Tasmania. We're really pleased to be making this announcement today.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) taking health care professionals away from other existing clinics?
COLLINS:
Certainly not. What we're doing here is we're working with health professionals to be able to provide additional hours of care. What we want to do is be able to have as many Tasmanians access health care when they need it. And what we don't want and what we need to avoid is to have people going into emergency departments, and putting more pressure on emergency departments, when they can be seeing a GP. But it's also an acknowledgment that getting in to see a GP sometimes can be difficult. We can't fix that overnight. But what we can do is work with the existing workforce, and provide some additional funds to get additional hours. And we're working as quickly as we can with the state government, the federal government together, to deliver these clinics.
JOURNALIST:
How does bookings work? You said it was a walk in from 2 til 8pm. Is it possible to book for a bulk billing session in that time? Or is it specifically walk in that you're only able to do and is there any sort of means testing on that?
COLLINS:
My understanding is that these are walk up clinics, that people take their Medicare card and they will be bulk billed. There will be no cost to these clinics. That is the way that we're designing them as urgent care clinics. What we want to be able to do is to have people who suddenly end up unwell, who know they're not well enough to not need a medical emergency department or an ambulance, but certainly need immediate care. When we've got issues in Tasmania ‑ like we do at the moment with lots of viruses going round in the winter ‑ we do know, for instance, that if somebody can get some antivirals in a short period of time when they're quite unwell, that takes a lot of pressure off and gets them better sooner.
JOURNALIST:
Minister, who was the provider for this particular clinic? Who would that be?
COLLINS:
It’s the Launceston Medical Clinic, is my understanding.
JOURNALIST:
And what’s the holdup with finding the other three providers? Is there, do we know what the other three are going to be yet or is there a bit of a hold up? And why?
COLLINS:
As I said, I'm hoping that we'll be able to make announcements in the coming weeks, and we certainly expect them all to be up and running before the end of the year.
JOURNALIST:
Are there any extra doctors who've been put on in this clinic? Maybe this is a question for Dr Jerome.
DR JEROME MUIR WILSON:
So we're pleased to partner and be open from 2 to 8pm, seven days a week. That allows us, our GPs are committed to working extra hours on Saturday and Sunday. So we still have our current GP workforce, and they've also had expression of interest from some other practitioners in the area that are looking to join the team to help in the afterhours period when traditionally GPs were accessible during the daytime. It's not to replace general practice. So those with chronic conditions or needing help are best placed by the regular GP. As Julie mentioned, this is for semi urgent conditions that aren't life threatening. So if your kid’s got a sprain, got a cut, they're unwell, in pain ‑ it's happened any day of the week, you'll be able to turn up and be bulkbilled with your Medicare card.
JOURNALIST:
So you're not, this is not for people who’ve maybe got a chronic condition to just try and replace their existing GP, you're really looking for those ‑
MUIR WILSON:
So that's an important thing, that we're not trying to replace general practice. And to keep this sustainable so there are enough doctors to see those that are truly urgent, we will have to turn some people away if they've had an ongoing condition or cost is their only barrier. What we are aiming to do is to provide those who’d otherwise go to emergency department with another option here.
JOURNALIST:
Can you just again break down the state's role in the operation of these clinics?
FERGUSON:
Yeah, well, the state won't be operating any of these clinics, nor will the Australian Government. They're being provided by our delivery partners ‑ well respected, recognised and qualified medical centres just like this one here at the Launceston Medical Centre. But what we've done by working together between governments is come to a combined level of funding. From the state’s part, it's 2.7 million. A lot more from the Australian Government across the country. But the role is, is thus. We’ll continue of course to offer emergency (inaudible) 24/7. But what this will do, noting that the LGH has about 40 per cent of its emergency department presentations are not an urgent or semi urgent, this is the caseload that could potentially be supported through an urgent care clinic like this one. And that will provide in many cases timely care to somebody who has a non‑life threatening breakage, a non‑complex fracture, a wound, maybe a minor burn, that might otherwise have been waiting for a long period of time based on triage needed at the ED at the LGH.
JOURNALIST:
Has there been any modelling done on exactly how many ED presentations this clinic, for instance, might divert each year?
FERGUSON:
I'm sure there has been. I don't have that today. But the whole point of this exercise is co‑design between the two governments, so that the federal initiative works in seamlessly with providing better afterhours and during the day access for urgent care that can take some of the strain off the LGH and allow the LGH to focus more of its resource and support for people who really are in significant trouble.
JOURNALIST:
And will the state consider funding more of these in the future?
FERGUSON:
We've actually got a model now that we believe is really perfect for our state. So one thing that Julie did say is that the, that final preparations are being concluded right now for the next announcement, which will be in the south. And that's going to be a very exciting announcement at that later time. But there'll be a further announcement in due course for the Northwest as well. So what we've done is make sure that we've looked after each region, noting that there's a very complementary role with our emergency departments in our four major hospitals across Tasmania, and on the primary care side an important role for patients to continue to retain their relationship with their existing GP.
JOURNALIST:
What funding does each clinic receive per annum for this? We've said that the overall Labor, of federal Labor scheme’s about $493 million for the entire across the Federation. You've said 2.7 million ‑ is that annual or is that over five years?
FERGUSON:
For us that's over the life of the agreement, five years. But we'd need to get you that if it's even available, though ‑ I'm not sure ‑ by clinic. It may even be something that's not disclosed because it's in an individual contract. The very point of this, of course, is the partnership has worked so well I want to talk it up. Not only have your two governments put the politics aside, we've focused on our community. We've put in combined resources. But most importantly, we've codesigned this so that both governments policies work together and support the overall health of our community, as well as our very busy EDs in hospitals. We just appreciate the time here today and, in particular, thank you to the doctors.
COLLINS:
Yes, thank you.
FERGUSON:
Thank you, you’ve made us so welcome and the patients who have tolerated us while they're waiting there. Thanks so very much. It's going to be exciting, but don't come until the 31st of July.