The Victorian and New South Wales governments will each establish 25 urgent care clinics to ease the pressure on emergency departments, with the premiers of both states blaming a decline in GP bulk billing for exacerbating record demand.
The free clinics will operate for extended hours and run in partnership with GPs to provide care for conditions such as mild infections, fractures and burns.
They will complement a similar federal government trial.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, and his NSW counterpart, Dominic Perrottet, made the announcement at a joint press conference in Melbourne on Tuesday.
Both leaders said a lack of GPs providing bulk-billing services was contributing to record demand at emergency departments, which were already under sustained pressure due to the pandemic.
“We know that because people can’t find a free bulk-billing doctor, the only free place to go for many is to go to the hospital, or perhaps wait [for care] longer than they would prefer to wait and their condition gets worse and worse,” Andrews said.
With states responsible for running hospitals, and federal government in charge of primary care, Perrottet said the two systems were “working against each other”.
“We are not here to pass the buck and shift the blame to the federal government,” he said. “But we need to work on reform.
“Simply investing money will not fix it. We need to look at new ways of doing things and the work that the NSW and Victorian governments have done together in relation to this program will ensure more support for bulk-billing GPs, to make sure that there’s less pressure on our public health system.”
In Victoria, 20 more clinics will be transformed in addition to an announcement earlier this month to turn five existing GP clinics in Ballarat, Clayton, Epping, Melbourne and Sunshine into priority care centres.
At the time of the initial announcement, several health experts questioned whether there would be enough staff to operate the facilities but Andrews on Tuesday said they would be using the current GP workforce.
Ten of the additional clinics will be established near hospitals including Albury-Wodonga Health, Alfred hospital, Austin hospital, Bendigo hospital and Werribee Mercy hospital. The remaining 10 clinic locations will be announced soon.
The NSW government has announced partnerships with GPs and primary health networks in four local health districts: the Murrumbidgee, northern Sydney, western Sydney and western NSW.
The locations of the additional clinics will be established where there is “greatest need, based on the demands experienced by hospital emergency departments”, Perrottet said.
During the first quarter of 2022, there were 737,704 emergency department presentations in NSW, while in the most recent quarter in Victoria there were a record 486,701 presentations – an increase of 5.1% on the previous three months.
Perrottet said the Victorian and NSW-run clinics would “complement” a $135m to trial 50 bulk-billed urgent care clinics, announced by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, during the federal election campaign.
The issue of strained hospital emergency departments has become a growing problem for both state governments, with ambulance ramping – when an emergency crew is unable to transfer their patients into hospital within a clinically acceptable time – becoming more prevalent as a result of surging demand.
In Victoria, the pressure on the state’s health system has become a key issue ahead of the November election, with the state opposition blaming it on “mismanagement and neglect” by Andrews, who has been premier or health minister for 12 of the past 16 years.
However, Perrottet described Victoria’s woes as “not unique” to the state.
“Every state health system around the country and around the world is under pressure,” he said. “That is only natural, particularly in circumstances where we’ve come through a one-in-100 year pandemic.”
Perrottet is facing an election in March 2023.
