INSTEAD of waiting hours in a public hospital emergency department with a sporting injury, a cut or a burn, an urgent care centre planned for Newcastle aims to have patients in and out within 60 minutes.
The team behind Heal Urgent Care hope to open a service designed to keep people out of hospital before the end of the year.
Emergency specialist and medical director Dr Tim Stewart said they wanted to provide a better alternative for patients needing immediate or urgent medical care.
"Our mission is to revolutionise the way urgent health care is delivered in Australia," he said.
"We know 70 per cent of patients who attend an emergency department are discharged home the same day, so 70 per cent of patients don't need to be in hospital. We're providing an alternative that allows them to be seen safely and effectively in the community."
Dr Stewart, with nurse practitioner and director of nursing Jason Carney, said accessing urgent health care was currently characterised by stress, accessibility issues, and long wait times. They hoped this model of care would help take some of the pressure off hospital EDs.
"One of the leading causes of inefficiencies in the hospital system is that there are patients with real emergencies and complex problems that take a lot of time and resources to work up to be admitted to hospital," Dr Stewart said. "Therefore the patients with the lower acuity injuries and illnesses tend to wait the longest. Urgent care patients are typically quite a rapid turnover... We'd like to see the majority of our patients in and out within 60 minutes, and that has certainly been achievable in systems that are currently successful overseas."
The service is not one of the urgent care clinics promised by the Labor government ahead of the federal election. Dr Stewart said this kind of urgent care was yet to be recognised by Medicare, so theirs would begin as a billed service.
"Urgent care is a new category of healthcare in Australia," Dr Stewart said. "The Medicare item numbers don't exist, certainly for emergency care specialists in the community... We're lobbying with government, we're talking to the Ministry of Health and we are talking to Medicare about changing that. In the future, when Medicare item numbers are changed and we get more government support and funding, we can start to open up the accessibility to patients who can't afford to pay."
They were yet to set a fee for the service.
Mr Carney said there would be on site X-rays and pathology, space for specialist-led follow up care, and on site parking.
"We'll have a customised area for people who have isolation requirements, so if you have cough, cold, fever, gastro, influenza, COVID, we'll have a designated area with three rooms, and there's also a large family size room if there's more than one person in the family that need to be seen," he said.
The development application for the site had been lodged with City of Newcastle. If all goes to plan they hope to open before Christmas. Its hours would be from 7am until 11pm seven days a week, "365 days a year".
"So we're always here for the community when they need us most," Dr Stewart said.
