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

I thank Senator Bilyk for the supplementary. These clinics are not just providing high quality urgent care when and where people need it; they're doing so free of charge. We are seeing some very pleasing data coming in. I acknowledge that it is early days, but the idea behind the Medicare urgent care clinics was to take, in particular, categories 4 and 5, as they are known in hospital emergency departments—non-urgent or semi-urgent presentations—and to relieve some of the pressure there. It's early days, but, at Logan Hospital in Queensland, category 4 and 5 presentations have gone down by 10 per cent since the Logan Medicare Urgent Care Clinic was opened, and at Ipswich Hospital there's been a 20 per cent reduction in that type of presentation, which obviously has significant benefits for the hospital. So, while it is early days, we are pleased with the results that we are seeing both in the numbers of people using the clinics and in the impact that the clinics are having on hospital EDs.