Answering urgent call to invest in GP Access pays off

When I visited this past week there was a constant stream of ambulances and patients filing in and out of the emergency department. It's no wonder the people of the Hunter were so despaired when the Liberals cut GP Access After Hours when they were in government.

GP Access After Hours is the premier after-hours healthcare service in the country. That's why in our first budget the government invested in GP Access After Hours. Reopening the clinic at the Calvary Mater, and restoring the opening hours at Belmont, Toronto, Maitland and John Hunter.

Last year, the Cessnock Medicare Urgent Care Clinic opened, and it has been delivering incredible results. It has had more than 6100 visits for urgent care and importantly it's taking pressure off Cessnock Hospital so it can focus on medical emergencies.

We tripled the bulk-billing incentive in November, and it has meant that across the Hunter there have been an additional 28,000 bulk-billed trips to the doctor.

There is more to do to improve GP access across the Hunter. We're establishing a new Medicare Urgent Care Clinic to service Lake Macquarie and Newcastle. This will take pressure off the John Hunter, where about 40 per cent of presentations are non-urgent or semi-urgent. The clinic will be open seven days a week, extended hours, and importantly it will be fully bulk-billed.

All patients will need is their Medicare card, not their credit card.

We know these clinics are working. Half of patients that have used an Urgent Care Clinic say they would have otherwise gone to an emergency department.

There have been more than 71,600 visits to Medicare UCCs in NSW to date. Of these, almost one in three were by people under 15 years old, and more than one in three visits were on the weekend.

We've worked with the Minns governments to make sure we've got the protocols right, so that people who really do need to go to hospital, go there.

But people who might be able to be seen at the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic by very highly qualified doctors and nurses, many of whom have a background in emergency medicine, can use that option.

The Lake Macquarie-Newcastle Medicare Urgent Care Clinic will be commissioned by the local Primary Health Network through expressions of interest.

I'm hoping to see the clinic open in no time.

I know that after 10 years of cuts and neglect from the Liberals, it's never been harder to see a bulk-billed doctor across the region. When Peter Dutton was health minister, he tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether, tried to jack up the price of scripts by up to $5 a script, and tried to cut $50 billion from the public hospital system - hospitals such as the John Hunter.

The Albanese government has not only been strengthening Medicare and increasing bulk-billing across the Hunter, we've been focused on making medicines cheaper during this cost-of-living crunch.

Two years ago, my Hunter colleagues Pat Conroy, Sharon Claydon, Meryl Swanson and Dan Repacholi vowed to make medicines cheaper, and we have been delivering on that promise.

In our first three months of government, we cut the maximum amount that millions of pensioners and concession card holders would pay for all of their medicines in a given year by 25 per cent.

In our first 12 months, we delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS, saving general patients more than $20 million every month.

In our first 18 months, we allowed doctors to prescribe a range of common medicines for chronic conditions for 60 days' supply, rather than just 30, saving patients time and money.

This year we are making medicines even cheaper by freezing medicine co-payments for general patients for a year, and concession patients for up to five years, and increasing the number of free medicine Webster-paks that pharmacies can deliver by 50 per cent.