Initially opposed to the urgent care centre model, the RACGP now wants to lead the way in developing standards for the clinics.
After almost three years, the RACGP appears to have begrudgingly accepted the existence of Medicare urgent care clinics – but its next campaign seeks to bring the model more firmly under GP control.
Earlier this week, federal health minister Mark Butler foreshadowed a new tranche of funding for UCCs coming in next week’s budget.
The $1.8 billion investment will make UCCs a permanent feature of Australia’s healthcare landscape, despite the fact that an interim evaluation released this year found just a 10% reduction in emergency department presentations nationally.
That evaluation has not yet been finalised.
On Wednesday, the RACGP formally announced that – in light of UCCs becoming permanent – it would be developing profession-led standards for nationally consistent urgent care.
“Urgent care is something that all general practices can provide and we need to make sure that that [type of] care continues to be led by general practice,” RACGP president Dr Michael Wright told The Medical Republic.
“Medicare urgent care centres have been set up with this idea that they’re led out of general practice.
“When … we held our urgent care roundtable last year, there was clear support for the college having a role to make sure that these urgent care centres are accountable to having the same safety standards as your regular general practice.”
With the RACGP currently drafting the sixth edition of its Standards for general practices, Dr Wright said the college was looking at ways to keep pace with the general practice landscape.
“With each update, there’s an analysis of the changing landscape to understand, what are the potential risks and what are the ways that we can provide care more easily,” he said.
“For the urgent care centres, a similar process would occur to make sure that you pick up some of the basic process, which could be everything from clear practice information to [an understanding] of what things are appropriate for treatment and what might be out of scope for these services.”
Doing nothing, Dr Wright said, risks the government investment going to waste.
“We’ve got to make sure that that funding is used wisely,” the RACGP president said.
“By having some clear standards for these services to operate to, it gives us a greater reassurance that they’re delivering the care that patients need.”
Related
The fact that the college is considering dipping its toe into UCCs signals a shift in its stance.
From the outset, the RACGP has been a vocal critic of the model: in 2024, Dr Wright’s predecessor called it a “misguided policy”, while the college’s Victoria chair was raising concerns about the effects of UCCs on GP workforce as far back as 2022.
The CEO of corporate GP chain ForHealth, which holds a significant portion of the country’s UCC contracts, told TMR that he welcomed the opportunity to work with the college on best-in-class standards.
“The federal government’s announcement really just solidifies urgent care as a permanent part of the system,” ForHealth CEO Andrew Cohen said.
“And I think that it is a really important part of the system that provides really critical access, [which] I think had been lost over a long period of time in terms of acute walk-in care and bulk billing access that goes into the after hours.
“I think it’s something that people have really embraced, it’s something that people need, and … it’s a really logical next step … It’s really important to have standards and accreditation, and I think it’s great that the RACGP are stepping forward into that.”
Mr Cohen added that whether or not work on official standards proceeded would be a matter for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
