Palmerston GP Super Clinic CEO Robyn Cahill says a new bulk billed walk-in clinic for urgent medical needs is now open to patients which aims to ease pressure on the hospital system

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now as we know, a new walk in bulk billing
clinic for urgent medical needs is now opened in Palmerston.
It is one of two urgent care clinics funded by
the federal government to ease pressure on the hospital system
and the Palmerston clinics operated by the GP Superclinic, and
it's CEO, Robin Carl, joins me on the line. Good

(00:20):
morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Robin, Good morning Katie.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Now, Robin, did the service commence on October first as planned?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yes, it did. We had a very soft commencement because,
as with most things in their territory, you try and
get all of the works done within a schedule. But
we had a really, really really short lead in time,
so we had contractors working frantically to get things done.
So we opted to open on the first in our
main clinic and we're really excited that from today, the

(00:51):
actual area that's designated as your care clinic will be
open from two thirty.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Good to hear. Now, what do you think is there
going to be a substantial amount of demand?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
It's really hard to say. We're hoping so, because we're
hoping that we'll see a shift away from the emergency
Department of the public hospital for those sorts of services
that don't need to be at the emergency department, but
where people can't get in to see their usual GPS
for something that's happened today that can't wait till tomorrow.

(01:25):
So we're really hoping people will take advantage of it.
We hope that relatively quickly we'll need to expand our
doctor numbers and that we'll see even more people coming
through that service.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And so are people going to be presenting with urgent needs,
you know, the way in which the clinic was designed
to sort of deal with with those kinds of patients.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
If it will so, I think one of the biggest
challenges will be to make sure that the community understands
you can't just come here because you can't get in
to see your GP. There's lots of things that we're
not allowed to do where it's very very in terms
of that. So we can't do things like repeat descriptions
or vaccinations or health screening. We can't do perhaps me
as any of those sorts of things. It really is

(02:09):
specifically about that I got up this morning and I
feel absolutely dreadful, and I might need some antibiotics, or
my child has just fallen over and got a small
cut on their leg, or I fell off my bike
last night and I think I might have broken something.
Those are the sorts of things that it's designed to
deal with, but not the things that are so urgent

(02:30):
that you really should go to the emergency department. So,
for example, if someone's experiencing check pain doultiple zero, go
to the hospital. If you've got a severe burn, or
you're concerned that someone might have been poisoned, like if
your child somehow got into the kitchen cupboard cupboard and
drunk something they shouldn't have there, the things that still
absolutely must go to the hospital. But for the other

(02:53):
you know, I got up and I think I've got
a unit attract infection, or I got bitten by an
insect last night and now it looks like I've got
an Allerge reaction. Those sorts of things you come to
the Urgent Care Clinic and we will deal with those
for you.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
And Robin, is it open to anybody across the Greater
Darwin area.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
It's open to anyone who's got a Medicare card, So
it's bulk build service for anyone who is Medicare eligible.
And it doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't
matter if you've been here before or not. When there's
a couple of little paperwork things that people have to do,
but nothing too onerous because obviously the federal government are
wanting to monitor and see how this is running. So
they want to be able to collect data in much

(03:31):
the same way they did when the respiratory clinics were
operating to make sure that they were capturing the people
who needed to be seen in the service. But other
than that, it's simply a matter of coming in making
sure that you meet the inclusion criteria and that if
you do, we will see you and we will bulk
build that service to Medicare.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
And what are the opening hours? When can people sort
of get there at this point?

Speaker 2 (03:55):
So we're opening from two thirty until eight thirty Monday
to Friday. It opens from twelve to six on a
Saturday and ten am till six pm on a Sunday.
And what we're hoping will happen at the moment, it's
one doctor, one nurse working in that service. We're hoping
we'll be able to interest a few other doctors around
town who might not be working in practice full time.

(04:17):
But he might be interested in doing a little bit
of extra work so that we can have maybe two
or three doctors working those hours, which if we can do,
will significantly increase our capacity of numbers of patients to seed.
So at the moment, with one doctor we think we
could probably see around forty patients session. If we have
two or three doctors, that then pushes up to over
one hundred, which will be a substantial relief of pressure

(04:40):
on the public system.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
And so, Robin, is the funding there for those to
get additional doctors? Is it just a matter of actually
finding them.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
It's a matter of finding them, absolutely. So the funding
that we've received will enable us to cover the costs
of the staffing costs, which is the critical element. And
because we're allowed to bug bill when we have an
increase in demand, that will help us support engaging with
other stuff members. So yeah, we're pretty confident that the

(05:10):
funding that we'll be able to generate with the support
that we've received from the federal government will actually enable
us to do that. Of course, time will tell. You
never know if you're actually doing it, and there's going
to be a few teething problems, So hopefully people will
be a little bit patient with us and not get
to annoyed with us if we hit a few speed bumps.
But we expect that within the next couple of months

(05:31):
it will be operating as it should now.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Robin. On a separate matter that we've spoken about quite
a bit this week, we have spoken to a number
of expectant mums in Darwin who've been unable to get
their pregnancy scans locally in the time frame required and
have ended up going to Catherine for them. Do you
have any idea, you know, what's sort of going on
or have you had you know, have you had patients

(05:54):
come in with this experience.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Well, we've certainly had patients come in who who are
saying it's been very difficult to get an appointment, not
just the scans, but for a range of things. We've
also experienced some significant delays in getting results read, even
for basic X rays, which is a bit concerning, and
so we've been doing a bit of digging and what
I've been able to ascertain is that the business that

(06:20):
previously held the contract for the Department of Health radiology
service was a company called IMED. My understanding is that
that service went out to tender last year. The tender
was awarded in July of this year, which kind of
coincides with when the problem problem started and I met
for whatever reason, weren't successful in that tender. So they're

(06:42):
the established business in the community. They have private practice
capacity as well as the services they were providing the
public system. And the company that has won the contract
is a company called Essay Radiology, and to my knowledge,
they don't have a presence in the private sector. So
my guess would be you've got a company who would
have been subsidizing its private practice operation with imed with

(07:06):
the work that we're doing with the public sector, will
now be struggling to because on top of the private component,
and you've got the company that is now during the
public sector service not appearing to be offering a private service.
I don't know if they're going to in the long
run or whether they're pure they're going to be doing
the public system, But I do know that for in

(07:28):
radiology specifically, and when you're talking about ultra founds, because
my sister is actually a sonographer, it's a highly specialized
feel and there aren't a lot of people who do
that specialty that are available in the northern territory. So
if you haven't got the senographers to do the work,
then you can't get the scand done. And that seems
to be the problem that's going on, And certainly we've noticed,

(07:49):
particularly the COVID pandemic, getting staffed the territory has become
even more difficult, and I expect that's had a fear
bit to do with it. I know I'm at a
working really really hard to combat that shortage, but they
can only do it. It's like us with general practitioners.
You can only do what you can with the people
that you can attract. So it is a bit concerning

(08:10):
that the public system isn't keeping up its level of
work as well. So while we have it kind of
indicates that maybe the transitional implementation to the new service
is probably lagging a little bit behind demand. So hopefully
for the community that will settle down in the next

(08:31):
month or two. I used to work in the public
sector and I should actually have responsibility for that area,
and it is, you know, it's a fairly involved and
fairly complex area. So moving a new provider in after
I think it's probably about twenty five years wow, the
previous providers under different iterations of companies. So the original

(08:51):
company got sold to another company, those sorts of things.
They've been providing the service for a very long time,
So extracting that and transferring to a new service is
there's going to be problems, and I think that's what
we're seeing.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
And Robin in terms of the implication scene, like for
pregnant women who maybe aren't able to get their scans
within the timeframe that is required, you know what kind
of impact does that have for them?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
I'm going to be a little bit radical. Yeah. Yeah.
So one of my hats that I don't practice anymore
is I was a childbooth educator and I think the
routine date scans that we now just routinely do have
become something that we all expect we should be able
to do, But you don't necessarily have to have one.

(09:39):
So I guess what we could probably expect in the
short term is that the women who need one because
they're investigating a concern, or they might have a history
of particular genetic issues or those things. Are an older
person who's wanting to make sure everything's okay, that should
be the priority and maybe for the rest, just for

(10:01):
that short term period. If we do have to wait
a little bit, maybe that's okay. If you're having a
really positive and healthy experience in your pregnancy, don't stress
too much. I know, it's really cool and nice to
see that images your above when you know, and it's
very reassuring, But don't stress too much if you can't
get that twelve weeks scan if you do have to
wait a little bit longer, because if your pregnancy is

(10:22):
going well and everything's doing really well, just trust your
body knows what it's doing and see how you go.
But I think if I heard people are traveling to Katin,
which is kind of ironic, it's not that long ago
they were traveling from Catherine to Darnwhen to see general practitioners.
So maybe it's a bit of quid for a quo
and if you're happy to do that, then that's fine.

(10:43):
It is an expensive process, though, so I think hopefully
we'll see the public system service come to the for
in the not too distant future. I think I hope
the department actually comes out and gives some information about
what's going on. I think, fine, you know, transitioning to
a new service, I just have to let people.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Know I agree, Lo, just that communication and letting people know,
like you've just done, you know, saying to expectant mums
you're gonna be okay, you know, if you're not high risk,
or if you're not an older expectant mum, or you
know some of the others that may have different concerns,
you know, just to relax. I think that is exactly
the kind of advice that people are wanting. Robin. Can

(11:25):
I ask you though, before I let you go as well?
What about when it comes to some of those things
like MRIs that we'd heard from Bill Yan, the Opposition
spokesperson a little earlier this morning about you know, some
women in Central Australia, for example, not able to get
breast scans and then obviously traveling to places like Darwin,
not because they don't have the equipment there, but because,

(11:46):
like you'd touched on, they don't have the staff to
actually be able to do it.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah. I think that in ability to access things that
are critical screening processes, particularly when you know, you hear
a certain age as a woman, you're being advised to
have regular mammograms and so on. I think the fact
that we can't provide those really core critical services at
the moment is really concerning, and I can you know,
I think that people will be reassured if they can

(12:14):
get some communication around how long is this delay going
to be and if it is linked to the transition
to the new service provider, that's okay. Just let people know,
let them know what the process is going to be,
because one would hope that as part of the tender
process they did actually assess the ability of a new
provider to supply that required start to do the service.

(12:37):
So everybody has kick ups they don't expect. And as
I said, it's like general practice, it's one of those
areas where it is really difficult to recruit people, particular
to remote areas. So I think if we focus on
those core critical people who need to have services done
first and for the rest of us who might just
routinely be having a mamazran done because it's that time

(13:00):
and else we can wait another month or so, then
don't stress too much about that and make sure that
the pathway for people who have a history in those
areas and do critically need those reviews on time, that
they actually get the priority. And if, like I said,
if the department can communicate to everybody what's going on,
and we know that there's an end in sight, then

(13:22):
that will make life a lot less stressful for everybody.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Well, Robin Carr, we always appreciate your time. Thank you
so much for joining us this morning.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Pleasure Katie. And hopefully people make use of the new
urgent care service, then we can actually see a reduction
in wait time with the emergency department those people who
really need to be there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Good advice and hopefully, well, I reckon, we might try
and catch up with you in a couple of weeks
as well, just to see how it's all going. Robin,
thank you, not

Speaker 2 (13:55):
A problem, Thanks Katie,