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New urgent care clinics won’t compete with existing practices, the health minister insists as staff shortages continue to plague Australia’s medical sector.<br> Expressions of interests are being sought for the operation of seven centres in Western Australia designed to take pressure off emergency departments.<br> The Albanese government is planning to open 50 bulk-billed clinics across the nation and expects to have three Perth-based facilities open by July.<br> It comes amid calls from state and territory leaders, who will discuss a report by the Medicare task force at Friday’s national cabinet meeting, for the Commonwealth to provide more hospital funding and increase rebates.<br> Health Minister Mark Butler said the urgent care clinics would stay open until 10pm and alleviate pressures on hospitals by catering to walk-in patients.<br> “The cases that are going to come to an urgent care centre are going to be dealt with somewhere,” he told reporters in Perth on Wednesday.<br> “They might not be life-threatening emergencies but they are emergencies that have to be cared for, either in an existing GP practice, or more likely in a hospital emergency department.”<br> Some doctors might split their shifts between regular practice and urgent care, he added.<br> “What we’ve been very clear not to do is to build new clinics that will be operating or setting up in competition with existing practices,” he said.<br> Australian Medical Association WA president Mark Duncan-Smith cast doubt on whether the clinics would make a substantial difference to hospital bottlenecks.<br> “They may have the unintended consequence of actually putting local GP practices out of business,” he said.<br> “The walking wounded-type patients that will go to urgent care clinics are already seen very quickly in emergency departments … they don’t take up beds, they don’t cause bed block and they don’t cause ramping.”<br> Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews urged the Commonwealth to increase bulk-billing rates, Slot Online saying patients were winding up in hospital after being failed by primary care.<br> “It’s not our job. We’re essentially doing some of the federal government’s work for them,” he said.<br> WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said her state had the lowest number of GPs per capita of any state or territory.<br> “As a result, we get the least amount of Medicare rebate,” she said.<br> “It’s important that we increase that.”<br> Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash said WA was facing a health workforce crisis and the government had not explained how it would staff the new facilities.<br>

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