Maitand Urgent Care Clinic Opens. Now it is Taree’s Turn - 12 December.

Breaking

17 Dec

The official opening of the Maitland Urgent Care Clinic yesterday was great news for the Hunter.

This was a bipartisan commitment, supported by both parties going into the election.

My electorate includes many Hunter communities such as Lorn, Largs, Bolwarra, Hinton, Wallalong, Woodville, Butterwick, Duns Creek, Maitland Vale, Tocal, Paterson and Vacy, and I am very pleased that they will have this facility on their doorstep.

However, the rest of the Lyne electorate has been left behind.

The Albanese Government has committed $1.4 billion over seven years to establish and operate a total of 137 Medicare urgent care clinics.

Excluding the newly opened Maitland Clinic, no other federally funded Medicare Urgent Care Centre exists between Coffs Harbour and Newcastle.

This is a significant healthcare chasm that my electorate sits squarely in the middle of and, undoubtedly, must bear the brunt of.

I have written to the Minister for Health on two separate occasions, calling on his goodwill and assistance in attaining an Urgent Care Centre for Taree.

Unfortunately, each response from the Minister’s Chief of Staff was in the negative.

Deliberations about the locations of the Albanese Government’s Medicare clinics are clearly political. The Coalition promised the delivery of an Urgent Care Clinic in Taree if elected. The fact that Labor did not do the same reveals that these decisions are politically motivated.

There is no criteria or merit assessments behind these decisions. If there were, Taree, the largest town and geographically most central location within the Lyne electorate, which has the oldest population and one of the poorest in the country, would surely meet the criteria.

I will be writing to the Minister for Health again with more persuasive data and evidence to convince him of the need for an Urgent Care Centre in Taree.

Data reveals that the Manning Base Hospital received over 17,000 low-acuity presentations just in the last 12 months. Providing opportunity for even 30–50% of those presentations to an Urgent Care Clinic would remove 5,000–8,500 presentations per year from the Emergency Department (13–23 per day on average), delivering noticeable improvements in emergency capacity and wait times.

I am still hopeful, and I look forward to working with Minister Butler to bring about this goal. I welcome any opportunity for collaboration to see the realisation of Urgent Care Clinics for all Lyne residents.

ENDS

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