Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Polley. It's really important that the Medicare urgent care clinics are integrated with services provided by both GPs and hospital emergency departments. By working closely with states and territories, we are ensuring that the services provided by these clinics are responsive to the needs of local communities, and we're working with GPs and PHNs to ensure the urgent care clinics are set up to deliver the end-to-end care that they need from these clinics. By working to ensure the quality of services provided by urgent care clinics, we will help ease the pressure on hospital emergency departments, and we know that we need to relieve this pressure—it's what the states and territories are telling us, and it's what anyone who has tried to use an emergency department will know. In New South Wales, for instance, it's estimated that almost half of emergency presentations to New South Wales hospital EDs are for semi-urgent or non-urgent conditions that are better off treated in these urgent care clinics. We look forward to seeing them develop in the next few months.