Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Provision needs to be made for improved health services in order to meet the anticipated need arising from the growth in population of Perth's northern coastal suburbs. The public hospital and emergency department at Joondalup Health Campus are extremely busy and are approaching their full operating capacity as the regional population grows beyond 300,000 residents. Planning for a new regional medical facility is essential in order to maintain a high standard of patient care and minimise waiting times for our residents.

I fully support the proposal by St John Ambulance WA seeking federal government funding to implement a trial of 10 urgent care centres, which provide an alternative to patients presenting to emergency departments for non-life-threatening conditions. The trial requires $185 million in funding for the initial infrastructure start-up costs, including four years operating costs. This financial support will ensure that patients can continue to be bulk-billed. Assuming that the trial is successful and becomes normalised, the financial support reduces to $15 million per annum operating assistance to support all 10 centres from there on.

St John Ambulance chief executive Michelle Fyfe and health services director Phil Holman recently provided my colleagues Senator Dean Smith and Senator Michaelia Cash and me with a tour of the urgent care centre in Joondalup. The centre offers a high-quality, safe and timely alternative care pathway for unscheduled care and, if necessary, X-rays, pathology and follow-up treatments such as plaster casting, urgent dental work and stitches onsite. This will provide a pathway for people requiring care for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions.

Last year, St John urgent care centres attended to approximately 57,800 patients, a third of whom would have otherwise attended an emergency department. Infections and injuries dominate as the main reasons for attendance, and the most common conditions are skin and soft-tissue injuries and musculoskeletal complaints. Urgent care centres have the ability to ease increasing pressure on existing emergency departments by transitioning patients with the lowest urgency cases, ATS 4 and ATS 5, to urgent care centres, providing substantial cost efficiencies for government and ensuring a patient-focused approach. With government support, the number of St John urgent care centres could increase from three to 10, and it would be cost-effective to government by $200 per patient in the first four years.