Tasmania will get four bulk-billing GP clinics when the federal government rolls out its key election policy, not three as initially promised, but doctors' groups are worried they will just cannibalise staff from existing practices.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the clinics, known as Medicare Urgent Care Centres, would be funded with state and federal money.
Two clinics will be set up in Hobart, instead of just the one initially announced last year, with another one each in Devonport and Launceston.
They will operate seven days a week over extended hours and will take walk-in patients who need help for an urgent, but not life-threatening, problem.
"Instead of spending hours in an emergency department, local patients will be able to visit a Medicare UCC, be seen by highly trained doctors and nurses, get X-rays or blood tests and be bulk-billed," Mr Butler said.
Speaking at a press conference in Hobart, Mr Butler said Tasmania was "running ahead of the nation" in getting the bulk-billing centres up and running.
"They will operate seven days a week, from 8am to 10pm and they will be fully bulk billed, staffed and equipped to take, say, a child who has fallen off a skateboard or sustained a deep cut, who needs care but not necessarily the sort of care you need in an emergency department," he said.
"It will take pressure off our stressed hospital system right across the country."
The federal government hopes the practices will be up and running by the middle of the year.
However, a spokeswoman for Mr Butler said the bulk-billing centres would not be brand new clinics, instead, they would be formed from existing GP clinics that had applied through an expression of interest process.
Tasmania — along with the rest of the country — already has a chronic shortage of general practitioners.
Late last year, the head of the Tasmanian chapter of the Australian Medical Association, John Saul, said there were about 60 vacant GP positions around the state at any one time.
Doctor Tim Jackson said the funding boost was appreciated but would not fix the GP access problem in the longer term.
"What we really don't want to see is this sucking people from their normal general practice work into these acute care centres, because that will only make it worse down the track," he said.
"Really, it's a political decision to try and decrease the pressure on accident and emergency departments and that will probably not reduce the demand for elective surgery or of the chronic disease increase we're seeing in Tasmania.
"Perhaps this money would have been better spent allowing general practice to do what it's traditionally done, which is help people manage their chronic disease so they don't end up in the ED.
"These centres are fine for people falling out of trees or getting fish hooks in them but they're not going to help with preventative care, and that's really where we need to decide how the money is spent."
Expressions of interest closed earlier this year for GP clinics wanting to become Urgent Care Centres.
Dr Jackson said he thought that approach was "probably the best way".
"There's no point setting up something shiny and brand new, next to something that's already there," he said.
"If you think about it, there are 240 clinics around Tasmania that used to do this sort of care but because Medicare funding is time-based, and these sorts of consultations take time, over the last 30 years or so they've defaulted to A&E [accident and emergency].
"Ultimately though it comes down to funding, and I don't think there is enough funding on the table."
