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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-07 Daily Xml
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Mount Gambier Hospital Wait Times

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Health. Can the minister please advise if wait times at the Mount Gambier hospital have decreased since the introduction of the urgent care clinic in Mount Gambier? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BELL: In November last year, the Mount Gambier urgent care clinic opened, offering bulk billed, no appointment, urgent health care in a bid to ease pressure on the Mount Gambier hospital emergency department.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:52): I thank the member for Mount Gambier for his question and his very passionate advocacy on behalf of health care in Mount Gambier. As the member knows, Mount Gambier and the Limestone Coast has been a region where it has been particularly difficult to access primary care for a long time, and almost impossible to access bulk-billing care for a long time.

That has placed, therefore, significant pressure in terms of attendances at the Mount Gambier emergency department. We have seen over the past decade the number of attendances at the Mount Gambier emergency department going up and up to quite significant levels. A number of those would have been people who would have otherwise gone to a general practitioner.

The other thing we always talk about when we talk about primary care is the number of people who, because of their inability to access primary care when they need it, become sicker and then have no choice but to attend an emergency department. Hence, we were very delighted that one of the locations for the Medicare Urgent Care Centres was to be in Mount Gambier. I know that there was a lot of excitement about that, but there were a few people in the community who were sceptical as to whether it would happen or not, given the difficulties in terms of being able to attract and retain a workforce.

That has opened over the past couple of months and the anecdotal feedback I have had so far is that it has certainly helped to reduce the number of presentations at the Mount Gambier emergency department. It hasn't fixed everything, of course, but it has helped to take enough of the pressure off. The data that I have been given recently shows that the urgent care centre is getting about 20 patients per day coming to it, which is a good number. We would like to see that increase, I think particularly as they start to improve their opening hours, as their workforce becomes more sustainable there.

The question the member for Mount Gambier asked is something I have already asked the department to do some work on in analysing the data, because this is going to be a very good example and a very good test case, not only for his community and the Limestone Coast but also as a demonstration of the value of these projects more broadly. It is essentially a controlled environment, whereas in metropolitan Adelaide it is more difficult to judge the catchments for locations for people.

We should be able to see the difference this urgent care centre makes both in the hours it is open but also in the hours more broadly in terms of the number of presentations and in terms of waiting times, etc. When you speak to clinicians, a lot of people who work in emergency departments will say that it is not necessarily the people with the minor conditions who are the issue but the people who have more complex conditions but, obviously, if we can help people earlier they can avoid getting to that point.

The other thing I will say is that this is not a remedy for primary care more broadly; people still need access to GPs, and we are very welcoming of the fact that the federal government has taken action in terms of tripling the bulk billing incentive for GPs. However, I think there is further action that will need to be taken in terms of primary care and Medicare as well, particularly in regions such as Mount Gambier.

Essentially, that is a long way of saying that I have already asked a number of similar questions. I am very keen to release that data, once we have that consolidated, and be in contact with the member for Mount Gambier. We thank him for his interest and also thank the community. We particularly thank the team behind the Medicare Urgent Care Centre, which I think has been very well received by the community.

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