URGENT CARE CLINICS
434. Dr D.J. HONEY to the Minister for Health:
I have a supplementary question. The
second part of my question was: are the urgent care clinics working as the
government promised? Does the minister believe urgent care clinics are
delivering as the government promised they would in 2017?
Mr R.H.
COOK replied:
The short answer is yes. They are
working. We are getting good throughput in the online referral system. But
there is something that we ultimately cannot
fix and that is because it is the commonwealth government's
responsibility to make sure that we
have a higher number of GPs. Western Australia has the lowest concentration of
GPs of anywhere in the country—the
lowest number of GPs per population—except, of course, in the western
suburbs. Your electorate, member, has the highest concentration of GPs
of anywhere in the country!
Dr D.J. Honey: They just want
to be near me, obviously!
Mr R.H. COOK: It must mean
that you are a very poorly mob, you lot in Cottesloe!
The
fact of the matter is that our GP networks need to continue to make sure that
they can provide quality health care to the public. We want to engage them as
part of the urgent care clinic network, and this is exactly what is happening.