Greens promise mobile clinic for the vulnerable

The party made the election pledge this morning, promising $600,000 in capital funding for a fully equipped mobile health clinic van that will target Canberra’s most vulnerable residents, including the homeless.

Greens health spokeswoman Amanda Bresnan also promised $750,000 in recurrent annual funding to staff the van with a full-time GP, a full time-nurse practitioner, two support nurses and administrative workers.

“The Greens want to ease the demands on the hospital system by providing health care to people before they become acutely unwell,” she said.

“We can do this by investing in primary health services,”

Ms Bresnan said in 2009-10, 20 per cent of the ACT’s hospital admissions were preventable and 7.1 per cent of ACT residents reported that they were unable to get transport to a health service.

“Many vulnerable people do not get help when an illness first presents because of difficulties with transport, access to information and payments for health services,” she said.

“Quite often, despite pain or discomfort, people don’t engage in the health system until their illness reaches a level where they require hospital treatment.”

The proposed clinic would operate from 9am to 9pm Monday to Saturday, and 10am to 5pm on Sundays.

Ms Bresnan said similar clinics had been effective in other cities, including Melbourne.

The Health Care Consumers Association said it would like to see the mobile clinic van trialled.

“It’s too early to commit completely to this but we are interested in the proposal and we hope it gets up,” executive director Darlene Cox said.

“We’re supportive of innovative models that are using resources differently, that’s for sure.”

Ms Cox said the clinic could be used to assist patients in pockets of Belconnen, outer Tuggeranong, or around the Causeway area in Kingston, where residents did not always have the transport or resources to get to a GP.