Urgent care clinic Launceston: How to access bulk-billing GP once it opens on July 31
Tasmania’s first urgent care clinic, a bulk-billing GP service with extended operating hours, will accept its first patients this month. Here’s how it can be used >>
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Tasmania’s first urgent care clinic, a bulk-billing GP service with extended operating hours, will accept its first patients on July 31.
The first clinic — one of four promised to the state — will be at Launceston Medical Centre, within the Launceston Health Hub at 247 Wellington St.
Walk-in patients seeking to access treatment may do so between 2–8pm daily including weekends. Services will be bulk-billed, provided attendees bring their Medicare card.
The clinics are only available for use in acute situations that fall short of the need for transport to an emergency department via an ambulance: think lacerations, infections, broken bones.
The service cannot be used for the ongoing treatment of chronic conditions.
“We’re not trying to replace [existing GPs],” the hub’s managing director Dr Jerome Muir-Wilson said.
Asked about workforce constraints, Dr Muir-Wilson said there were opportunities for his existing GPs to work weekends, while an expressions of interest process has kicked off to find “additional practitioners to help in the after-hours period”.
Wednesday’s announcement of the first Tasmanian clinic was tempered by news Tasmania’s additional three clinics – two in greater Hobart, one at Devonport – may not be operational until the end of 2023.
The state and federal governments had originally set a timeline of “mid-2023” for the four clinics’ operations to commence.
Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins, attending Wednesday’s announcement alongside Senator Helen Polley, said the state and federal governments “hoped to have the next three up and running by the end of the year”.
The first of two greater Hobart clinics would be announced next in the “coming weeks and months”.
Ms Collins said she was aware of “many families” in the Launceston region “who have had to wait long hours at the Launceston General Hospital for non-life threatening issues”.
“The Launceston UCC will ease pressure on our local ED and be much more convenient for our community – closer to home, at short notice, and free under Medicare,” she said.
According to Department of Health figures, nearly 40 per cent of presentations at the hospital’s ED are for “non-urgent or semi-urgent care”.
The clinics are a fulfilment of a federal Labor election promise delivered in the lead-up to last year’s federal election.
It will fund a total of 58 clinics nationwide at a cost of $493.5m over five years. The state government has chipped in an additional $2.7m over the five years for Tasmania’s four clinics.
Acting Premier Michael Ferguson said that this additional funding commitment secured for Tasmania a fourth clinic – the state was originally only allocated three.
He said that the co-design of Tasmania’s four UCCs showed politics at its best – two parties reaching across the divide to act in the state’s best interests.
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