Half the patients using Mark Butler’s urgent care clinics as alternative to GPs, evaluation suggests
An interim independent evaluation of the UCCs appeared on Thursday.
Half of patients who went to one of the Federal Government’s urgent care clinics used it as an alternative to general practice rather than ED, an interim analysis suggests.
Under a policy that will cost over a billion dollars, the government has set up 87 urgent care clinics (UCCs) since 2023, with 50 more promised going into the federal election on 3 May.
The first evaluation of the program, published on Thursday, found that 50% of patients said they would have seen another GP if the UCCs were unavailable, compared with 46% who said they would have otherwise gone to ED.
The finding was based on available data from 401,000 presentations, out of roughly a million presentations since the first urgent care clinic was opened in June 2023.
