Funding Boost for Lake Haven Medicare Urgent Care Clinic 

A re-elected Albanese Labor Government will deliver additional access to urgent health care in Lake Macquarie, the Central Coast and Newcastle with more funding to the Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in Charlestown and Lake Haven, to boost their capacity to treat more patients.

Since the Charlestown Medicare Urgent Care Clinic opened in late November 2024, the clinic has already treated 5,100 patients, averaging around 50 people each day. 

The Lake Haven Medicare Urgent Care Clinic has seen strong growth in patient numbers, treating more than 17,500 Australians since it opened, and an average of around 45 people a day in recent weeks.

This makes the Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in Charlestown and Lake Haven some of the busiest in Australia.

A re-elected Albanese Labor Government will open another 50 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, with more clinics in every state and territory. There will be a new clinic on the Central Coast with a new Urgent Care Clinic in Terrigal.

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 all services are bulk billed, with no out-of-pocket costs.

The highly trained doctors and nurses are equipped to treat a range of conditions and injuries that need urgent attention but aren’t life threatening, such as a cut, a high temperature, a viral infection or a sprained ankle.

The Charlestown and Lake Haven clinics are helping to ease pressure on the John Hunter Hospital and Wyong Hospital, where over 2 in 5 presentations were for semi- or non-urgent conditions in 2023–24. 

Urgent Care Clinics also provide important cost-of-living relief for patients seeking urgent, but not life-threatening care.

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 250,000 presentations to the 22 clinics in New South Wales.

This is an election commitment.