The $2.5 million super clinic planned for Shellharbour will increase pressure on area hospitals by uncovering more ailments that require hospital-based treatment, a policy thinktank says.
A report released today by the Centre for Independent Studies predicts super clinics will likely accentuate the challenges facing the health system as the population ages.
The report, The False Promise of GP Super Clinics, Part 2: Coordinated Care, suggests shifting as many hospital-based services as possible into community facilities to ease demand on hospital beds.
Report author Jeremy Sammut drew on existing examples in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia to pen a retort to the government's 31 planned super clinics, a pre-election promise.
Mr Sammut said co-ordinated care, where a nurse or GP monitor the care of the chronically ill to ensure they receive all care available from a variety of health providers, would not have the intended effect of keeping people out of hospital and saving on health costs.
"All the evidence that I've seen shows that if you do provide people with better quality and quantity of primary care that leads to an increase in demand for hospital services," he said.
"The real agenda of the advocates of GP super clinics is to facilitate the expansion of Medicare to cover the allied health sector, thereby allowing the ageing baby boomers to transfer the cost of loosening their stiff backs and soothing their sore feet on to the taxpayers of Gen X and Y."
Throsby MP Jennie George said the development was key in redressing Shellharbour's GP shortage.
"The main purpose, as I understand, of the GP super clinics is really to address the issue of GP shortages in a number of areas around Australia," she said.
"I'm told currently there are no doctors left in Shellharbour village and ... at Shell Cove we anticipate further substantial population growth.
Stakeholders will discuss the super clinic at an information and consultation session, open to the public, on July 2 at Seaspray Function Centre in Shellharbour.