Despite high levels of support for urgent care clinics, recent polling found GPs were unclear on where the government was finding the cash.
A recent poll of more than 2000 Australian GPs found that while almost two thirds supported urgent care clinics, a large portion would decrease that support if it emerged that Medicare funding was being deprioritised as a result.
The survey, run by medical education provider HealthEd and shared with The Medical Republic, asked GPs whether they did or did not support UCCs as a concept; 65% said yes, 34% said no.
These results were roughly consistent with a similar survey conducted by HealthEd in December 2024, where around 70% of respondents said they supported UCCs in principle.
It’s a figure that has since been cited by Health Minister Mark Butler, who recently announced that Labor would open another 50 of the clinics if they formed government at the upcoming election.
He has also stated that the program will be a “permanent feature of Australia’s healthcare system”, even though an official evaluation will not be released for some time.
When asked where they thought the money to fund UCCs was coming from, however, 56% of the HealthEd respondents said they did not know.
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Another 29% believed it came from federal Medicare funding, while 6% thought it came from federal funding for hospitals.
The $585 million already invested in UCCs came from the Department of Health and Aged Care.
While the same department does manage the Medicare Benefits Schedule, it’s not necessarily drawing from the same pot of money.
This is with the exception of the consults that happen within a UCC, which are bulk billed and therefore do draw from the Medicare pot of money.
Exemptions are in place that allow UCCs to receive additional funding even though the doctors working out of them are bulk billing.
Confusing matters further is the fact that UCCs are occasionally referred to as Medicare Urgent Care Clinics by Mr Butler.
HealthEd also asked GPs whether their support would change if less money was available under Medicare as a result of funding being prioritised to UCCs.
Just over 100 respondents – around 5% of the total – said that knowing that information would cause them to increase their support for UCCs, and around one third said their level of support would not change.
The remaining 62% said their support would either slightly or significantly decreased.
When asked whether they supported the additional 50 UCCs, around 30% of HealthEd respondents said they were fully behind the proposal, another 30% gave in-principle support and the remaining 40% said they did not support the additional clinics.
