Urgent care, but only after lunch

Labor’s Urgent Care Clinics (UCC) are a great idea that have been executed poorly. 

If you’ve had the misfortune to need an UCC, you know they work. I had to run my husband to the Launceston UCC one night last year after an incident with a sharp cutting tool and his finger getting in the way. He was seen immediately – there wasn’t any wait time – and the doctors were pretty quick to assess the cut and stitch it up. (Thank goodness for that because blood and I are not friends). 

But they only work if you get sick or injured at the right time. Labor announced the UCC’s in the flurry of the 2022 election and said they’d be open from 8am – 10pm. 

Not a single Tasmanian UCC is open these hours. The Launceston one is close, with a recent cash splash meaning it’ll be open from 9am – 8pm. So what about the other four in the state? 

Devonport has the shortest operating hours of any UCC in the state, open from 2pm – 9pm on weekdays and 1pm – 9pm on the weekends. Labor said back in December 2023, when the clinic first opened, that they expected the clinic’s opening hours would be expanded over time. Well it’s 15 months later and they haven’t changed. 

When Tammy raised this in the media last week, Labor said the Devonport clinic opening hours had been agreed on with the Tasmanian State Liberals, and took into account “local context, workforce availability and potential demand.”

Basically: there’s not enough doctors to open the clinic from 8am -10pm. 

Most people in North-West Tasmania would understand that. But then Labor announced that Burnie will get its own UCC if they win the election. 

How can Labor open a brand new UCC in Burnie if they can’t even staff the Devonport clinic to be open for the hours they promised? 

The UCC’s are supposed to take pressure off emergency departments for more minor injuries. But they can’t do that if they’re not open. I’ve had two work colleagues who were sick or injured outside the hours of the UCC’s. One of them had food poisoning overnight and ended up going to a private urgent clinic in the morning. She paid $160 out of pocket for her care. She paid for something that Labor promised would be available through their clinics.

The other story is even better. My other colleague fell off a bike and put a bit of a hole in his arm, to put it mildly. He’d been to the Launnie UCC before and was surprised to rock up and realise it didn’t open for another two hours. So he wandered around to the Launceston General Hospital’s emergency room, where there was a huge line of people waiting.

Long story short – he sat in emergency for two hours, then went back to the UCC when it opened and got fixed up. 

I’m not trashing the idea of the UCC’s. When they’re open, they work. But to reduce pressure on emergency waiting rooms, they have to actually be open. 

And the fact that none of the Tasmanian UCC”s are open to the hours Labor said they would be is a broken promise. One they don’t seem to have any intention of fixing.

There’s no point splashing the cash to set up another 50 around the country if the ones we have don’t work properly in the first place.

There’s also the issue that the UCC”s are potentially cannibalising our GP workforce, but that’s a problem for another day.