Australia's first private emergency department separate from a hospital has opened in Canberra.
For a charge of $375, patients can turn up at the Canberra Emergency Care Centre at 7-11 Barry Drive and get the full range of ED treatment from broken bones to fevers.
Heart attacks or multiple broken limbs in a car crash are better going straight to Canberra Hospital but for the range up to these "time critical emergencies", conditions like injuries, infections, chest pains or breathing difficulties, there's a new facility, the only one of its type in the country.
It's part of a company called Private Emergency Health Australia which has emergency departments in Queensland, WA and Tasmania which are tied to hospitals. The one in Canberra is not.
The doctor who runs it says the big plus is a shorter waiting time than there is in the emergency departments at Canberra Hospital or North Canberra Hospital.
"We're getting more and more demands into the (public) emergency departments," Nicholas Lonergan who has also worked at Canberra Hospital, said.
"Wait times are getting longer and longer, and if you've go in with, for example, a stubbed toe or you think you've broken your ankle or your wrist or you've got a febrile (feverish) kid, there are other people who are more unwell, and you keep getting pushed down the queue because someone comes in and they're having a heart attack," Dr Lonergan said.
"If that's my mother or father, I want that person to be looked after first. It's frustrating, isn't it?"
The private emergency department's pitch is that the frustrating situation in a public hospital can be avoided in the private unit. Taking a broken foot or a wheezing child to the private emergency clinic also relieves the pressure at the Canberra hospitals, Dr Lonergan said.
They are best placed to deal with the very seriously ill.
"The beauty of here is that we're not seeing that critically unwell group. They're going to go to the Canberra Hospital or North Canberra Hospital."
The Canberra Emergency Care Centre can treat heart attack and stroke victims: "We've got emergency physicians here. We've got all the resuscitation equipment here," its director said.
But these "time-critical emergencies" should go straight to Canberra Hospital. "There's not a large number of them. The biggest one would be acute stroke, so an acute stroke should go to Canberra Hospital because that's our stroke centre for the ACT and southern NSW.
"Major trauma: you've been in a major car accident and you've got multiple breaks and rib fractures and so on, that's going to go to Canberra Hospital as the major trauma centre in the territory."
On Tuesday morning, one of the patients was a schoolboy from Brisbane who had injured his ankle. Taite Hodge's teacher Cam Brooks said he had been to public hospital emergency departments before "and there was a very long wait. Here, there was no wait time. We filled out the form and came straight in. He got X-rayed and got a moon-boot on and we're ready to go."
The Canberra Emergency Care Centre can cope with 40 to 60 patients a day. There are five full-time nurses and about 20 casuals. There are 30 emergency medicine specialists on the staff. It's open from 8am to 8pm.
Even though, it's not part of a hospital, Dr Lonergan said it was very plugged into the ACT health system, both public and private. They can refer serious cases.
"We would be talking to Canberra Hospital and saying, 'We've got a major heart attack. We need to get them to the cath lab (a special examination room with specialised heart attack equipment). We'd talk to the cardiologist, talk with ambulance ACT and move that patient to where they can have the right treatment at the right time."
Going to the centre costs a basic $370 and isn't covered by Medicare.
"Standard items used during your care are included in your facility fee. Some items, such as complex dressings or medical aids including crutches, may incur an additional charge. If you require imaging or pathology (including X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound or blood tests), these are billed separately by external providers."
