ACRRM has announced that it will be monitoring the establishment of UCCs in the lead-up to an audit on their performance.
The Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine announced on Friday that it will continue to monitor the establishment and operation of the Medicare Urgent Care Clinics.
It was announced in the 2024-25 budget that the government would allocate $227 million over the next three years to enhance the capacity of UCCs with also the provision of supplementary support to rural and regional clinics.
An audit is reportedly in the works to assess the stand-up and early implementation of urgent care clinics, with a focus on the selection of locations and providers for UCCs and the establishment of performance measures and monitoring arrangements.
ACRRM has expressed interest regarding how the audit could assess the long-term viability of UCCs in the rural healthcare workforce, but it has also expressed concerns regarding how UCCs within the rural healthcare could further fragment an already fragmented system.
“They’re designed to take the pressure off of emergency departments and but the great risk is that it’ll end up being high-cost care for benefit that no one has an idea of,” ACRRM president Dr Rod Martin told The Medical Republic.
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“The thing that we’re particularly concerned about, is that there’s already enough fragmentation in health, and there’s certainly lots of fragmentation in rural health, with patients having to go to other centres.
“There’s plenty of data that says clinical continuity improves outcomes for patients and it’s not just Australian data, it’s worldwide data.
“You would question whether or not that that fragmentation is worth the cost.”
The establishment of urgent care clinics in rural areas has also drawn concerns over how it will impact the current rural health workforce issue because of inequitable worker allocation.
“If we’re pulling people away from rural general practice because they’re now going and working in urgent care centres, then fine, we’ll get through the money, but it’s a matter of whether we get good value for that,” Dr Martin told TMR.
“It’s very much a bit of a data free zone, so far as so far as we can tell.”
