The Perrottet Government has rang in the new year with a fresh round of health cuts, halving the weekend hours of the GP Access Clinic at Belmont Hospital.  

The State Government has provided critical funding to Hunter Primary Care to run the local GP Access clinics, but since 2020 that funding amount has dropped from $559,000 to just $105,000 last year.

This despite the service seeing 49,033 patients of which 11,000 were accepted from the emergency department, saving the health system $14.2 million in efficiencies.

Ms Yasmin Catley MP – Shadow Minister for the Hunter said ‘The decision to strip State Government funding away from the After Hours GP Access Clinics makes absolutely no economic sense, this service saves the state about 14 million dollars each year’.

‘With the Service at the Mater Hospital having closed on Christmas eve and with hours to be cut at the Belmont Hospital, John Hunter Hospital and Toronto clinics, people will be left with no choice but to instead present to the emergency department’.

‘Since the announcement of the cuts to the local GP Access Clinics, I have been contacted by furious residents appalled that any Government would cut health services in the middle of a pandemic. The cuts are also causing further anxiety to young families and older residents about the accessibility of bulk billing GP services’.

‘I have written to both Brad Hazzard and Greg Hunt as the State and federal Health Ministers calling on this funding to be restored, it is time they listened to the concerns of the community and reinstated the hours cut from the Service’