Priya Alexander

And we've just heard that the federal government are going to permanently embed these Medicare urgent care clinics into the health system.

And they've committed to investing $1.8 billion over five years, which is a lot of money.

Mm-hmm.

And I think people will know these clinics because they're the free bulk billing walk-in clinics that you can see instead of an emergency department, ideally, for kind of low triage health problems.

The question is, is there evidence that they actually work?

And we are joined now by the Minister for Health, Mark Butler.

Thank you for joining us.

I guess the question is, though, Minister, you're investing a lot of money into these urgent care clinics and this is all before the final report is coming out on their evaluation on how effective they are.

Are we jumping the gun a bit here?

I'm going to declare my conflict, Mark, which is that I am a practising GP, so I am slightly conflicted here.

But I think some people would argue that there is a real opportunity here to actually invest in primary care or general practice, which actually already delivers a lot of the care that urgent care clinics do.

What's your response to that?

Well, there is a slight issue with continuity of care, this potential that you're seeing different clinicians, which can really impact care.

What's the solution to that?

Because I know there's the suggestion of potentially national standards of care that are being introduced, perhaps run by the Royal Australian College of GPs, but is there a plan to actually address continuity specifically?

I agree that the intention is to reduce the burden on ED presentations, which I see the intention of it, and I think a lot of people do.

I just wonder though, because the same interim report that we keep mentioning has shown that the cost of a presentation at an urgent care clinic is $246.50, that's per presentation.

Whereas if someone came and saw me in the clinic for the same thing, a finger fracture or a low triage problem that they can see me for instead of the emergency department, if I spend less than 20 minutes with them,

the government, the federal government or the taxpayer contributes around $42 to the consult.

It's a very big discrepancy in price.