Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

GP Access After Hours is an innovative, highly valued model for delivery of comprehensive, high-quality after-hours primary health care to the community of the lower Hunter region, including my electorate of Newcastle. It is a multifaceted service that incorporates four major elements: a telephone patient-streaming service, where qualified nurses triage patients to ensure they get the best advice and care they need; GP clinics in five locations across the Hunter urban region, with more than 250 experienced local GPs on roster; a transport service provided to patients who could not otherwise attend a clinic; and a home visit service for patients needing home care or an assessment. The service has provided care to more than one million patients since its inception more than a decade ago, and it enjoys very broad community support. Indeed, until very recently, it enjoyed bipartisan support in this place.

While it has been long established that GP access is a service that the Hunter community wholeheartedly supports, the total savings to the health system through its operations have never been fully estimated until now. This year, the operators of GP access, Hunter Primary Care, commissioned the Hunter Research Foundation and the Hunter Medical Research Institute to undertake an economic analysis using a cost-study approach of the delivery of the GP Access After Hours services and what it means for savings around the health system costs and, indeed, what it would mean if GP Access After Hours did not exist. Using a combination of patient surveys, actual patient volumes and costs across both GP access and alternative services, the study found that GP access saves the overall health system more than $10 million a year. The largest savings delivered by GP access is in emergency department presentations. Without the service operating as it is, more than 61 per cent of GP access users said they would have gone to a hospital emergency department if the service did not exist. This economic savings is in line with best practice clinical treatment for patients using the service, with GP treatment a more appropriate primary healthcare treatment than emergency department treatment for most users.

In essence, GP access is not only good social and health policy, it is also smart economic policy. GP access relies on federal government funding to operate and, as I mentioned earlier, until this year this service had enjoyed bipartisan support. When the Liberal government then left them out of the 2015 budget, they had to fight for their future. The service was only saved after the community came out in force, with thousands signing petitions, writing letters and voicing their concerns. I call on the Turnbull Liberal government to end the uncertainty for this service and to guarantee secure, long-term funding for GP access after hours. (Time expired)