Tuesday, 22 April 2025
A re-elected Albanese Labor Government will ensure Australians in the electorate of Kingston find it easier to get the free, urgent care they need, with more funding to the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Morphett Vale, to boost its capacity to treat even more patients.
Since the Morphett Vale Medicare Urgent Care Clinic opened in December 2023, the clinic has already treated more than 21,000 patients, averaging around 45 people each day.
This makes the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Morphett Vale one of the busiest in Australia.
A re-elected Albanese Government will work with the providers of the Urgent Care Clinic to determine the best way to boost the capacity of the clinic, whether through extending the hours it operates or bringing on additional staff.
We will also open another 50 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, with more clinics in every state and territory.
The Liberals say the Albanese Labor Government’s Urgent Care Clinics are “wasteful spending”. Peter Dutton will close every Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, forcing over a million Australians a year back into the waiting rooms of busy hospital emergency departments.
Medicare Urgent Care Clinics are open seven days a week, for extended hours. No appointment is needed, patients can walk in and receive free, urgent care – fully bulk billed – without waiting hours in a busy hospital emergency department.
Four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of a bulk billed Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, once all of Labor’s clinics are open.
The Urgent Care Clinic in Morphett Vale is helping to ease pressure on the Noarlunga Hospital, where 43 per cent of presentations in 2023-24 were for the kind of urgent, but not life-threatening issues that Urgent Care Clinics are equipped to treat.
Nationally, the 87 existing Medicare Urgent Care Clinics have already seen more than 1.3 million people since the first sites opened in June 2023. This includes almost more than 82,000 presentations to the 6 clinics in SA.
This is an election commitment.
Quotes attributable to Amanda Rishworth MP:
“The Morphett Vale Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has been a game changer for our community and Labor will boost its capacity so it can treat even more people.”
“Only Labor will strengthen Medicare by delivering more bulk billing and more Urgent Care Clinics.”
“I know many families that have used the Medicare Urgent Care Clinic when otherwise they would have been stuck waiting for hours at the Noarlunga Hospital.”
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