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

I thank Senator Bilyk for the question and acknowledge the opportunity I had to visit Family Planning Tasmania with Senator Bilyk to open the endometriosis and pelvic pain clinic this year. It was a great opportunity to again extend primary health care and take pressure off hospital departments.

There are now 47 Medicare urgent care clinics open and operating, including the Alice Springs Medicare urgent care clinic, which opens today. There are 47 clinics up and running, with 58 to be open by the end of the year. As senators know, the Medicare urgent care clinics are open seven days a week, with extended hours. They're open to walk-in patients who need urgent care but for not life-threatening issues either for themselves or for their children. We are seeing some excellent examples of how these clinics are meeting the needs of that patient group.

We had a young patient, with his mum, who went to the Ipswich clinic with a suspected broken wrist from playing basketball. He was triaged in just five minutes. He was seen shortly after by a doctor. He was X-rayed, he was treated with a splint and he was connected for a physio appointment the following week. This was all done within two hours. Another patient took her daughter to the Penrith Medicare urgent care clinic when her daughter sustained a possible ankle fracture from playing soccer. He daughter was seen, X-rayed and discharged with a CAM boot in less than one hour.

The patient's mum said, 'Why would anyone go to the emergency department with this sort of injury when the Medicare urgent care clinic can deal with it so quickly?'

So far across Australia, there have been more than 75,000 presentations to Medicare urgent care clinics. Nearly a third of these patients are under 15 years of age. A third of visits are on the weekend, and on weekdays more than one in five visits have taken place after 6 pm.