Indigenous People’s Use of a Primary Urgent Care Centre at a GP-Led Primary Healthcare Service in Regional Queensland in 2020–2021

Shauna Fjaagesund, Wenwen Zang, Raymond Gadd, Jayley Hart, Piotr Swierkowski, Andrew Ladhams, Christopher Hicks, Sylvia Andrew-Starkey, Evan Jones, Alexandru Coman, Gavin Beccaria, Florin Oprescu and Xiang-Yu Hou ()
Additional contact information
Shauna Fjaagesund: School of Health, University of the Sunshine Coat, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556, Australia
Wenwen Zang: Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4066, Australia
Raymond Gadd: Health Hub Doctors Morayfield, Morayfield, QLD 4506, Australia
Jayley Hart: Health Hub Doctors Morayfield, Morayfield, QLD 4506, Australia
Piotr Swierkowski: Health Hub Doctors Morayfield, Morayfield, QLD 4506, Australia
Andrew Ladhams: General Practice Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Christopher Hicks: Health Hub Doctors Morayfield, Morayfield, QLD 4506, Australia
Sylvia Andrew-Starkey: Morayfield Minor Accident and Illness Centre, Morayfield, QLD 4506, Australia
Evan Jones: School of Health, University of the Sunshine Coat, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556, Australia
Alexandru Coman: Department of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy ‘Iuliu Hatieganu’, 400347 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Gavin Beccaria: School of Psychology and Wellbeing, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia
Florin Oprescu: School of Health, University of the Sunshine Coat, Sippy Downs, QLD 4556, Australia
Xiang-Yu Hou: Centre for Health Research, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia

IJERPH, 2025, vol. 22, issue 7, 1-10

Abstract: To explore Indigenous patients’ use of a primary urgent care centre (PUCC) at a co-located general medical practitioner (GP)-led primary healthcare service (GP service) in regional Queensland, Australia, secondary data analysis was conducted using the 65,420 deidentified PUCC patients from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021, including Indigenous status. A Mann–Whitney U test and Chi-Square test were used to analyse patients’ arrival times, reasons to attend PUCC, and frequency of attendance. The proportion of Indigenous patients from the communities attending the PUCC was 9.8% while the proportion of Indigenous people in the general population was only 3.8%. Indigenous patients were more likely to be new patients to the GP service (13.6% never visited the GP service prior to PUCC) compared to non-Indigenous (9.6%) patients. The peak hours of attendance for Indigenous people were 11 a.m.–12 p.m. and 2 p.m.–3 p.m. while it was 10 a.m.–12 p.m. for non-Indigenous patients. The most common reason for attending PUCC for both patient groups was superficial injuries. The second most common reason was digestive issues for Indigenous patients and musculoskeletal issues for non-Indigenous patients. These findings provide insights for enhancing future PUCC models to better meet the community needs, especially the underserved Indigenous population in regional areas.

Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; Indigenous people; general practice; primary healthcare; primary urgent care; community urgent care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/7/998/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/7/998/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:22:y:2025:i:7:p:998-:d:1686808

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().