Urgent care services
Overview
Why this is important
Urgent care services aim to reduce demand for emergency services by diverting patients with non life-threatening conditions from ambulance services and hospital emergency departments.
Through this, urgent care services intend to improve statewide health outcomes by ensuring that Victorians receive the right level of support, when and where they need it.
Urgent care services include Virtual Emergency Care which is delivered through the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department. Run by Northern Health, this service connects patients to a doctor or nurse via computer or phone, 24/7. The 2025–26 Budget included $437 million to triple the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department's capacity, enabling it to handle 1,750 calls per day by 2028–29.
Timely, high‑quality urgent care improves patient safety and health outcomes. It is important that services are working as intended to provide urgent health care when people need it and make the health system operate more efficiently.
What we plan to examine
We plan to examine if urgent care services are working as intended to reduce demand on ambulance services and hospital emergency departments.
Who we plan to examine
Department of Health
Northern Health
Further information
This complements our planned engagement 'Reducing demand on ambulance services' that also looks at initiatives designed to reduce demand on ambulance services and hospital emergency departments.
We looked at the Nurse-on-Call service in our report Delivery of NURSE-ON-CALL (2010).