Super clinics to be opened in Australia

Two multi-million dollar medical clinics will be opened in Brisbane by early 2011, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the University of Queensland announced on Thursday.

Rudd, speaking at the Mater Hospital in Brisbane, said the 7.5 million Australian dollar (6.8 million U.S. dollar) super clinics would provide a decent set of community based, extended general practitioner (GP) and allied health services available to the Australian community.

"GP super clinics are the way of the future," he said.

"If you've got a sick kid at 10 o'clock at night, you want some flexible hours so you can take your kid down to the local GP rather than having to trek him down to the emergency ward ... and wait for hours.

"My experience is that most kids time their sickness for the most inconvenient times, and we need to be more flexible by the way we have community services available."

The government is spending 275 million Australian dollars (249 million U.S. dollars) on one-stop-shop clinics, which are staffed by general practitioners, nurses and other allied health professionals.

Source: Xinhua