Face to face with urgent care

I waited for four hours with my one-year-old to see an urgent-care doctor for a wrist injury

As a mum of two young children, I’m a regular user of our local urgent-care clinic. Having barely set foot in one in the first six years I lived in New Zealand, I’ve made up for that in the past five years.

From reactions to bee stings to scarily high fevers, pulled elbows, trampoline injuries and bronchiolitis, we’ve had our fair share of sitting in waiting rooms late at night or over the weekend. Because, of course, these things always happen in the evening or at the weekend.

So far in 2023 we’ve battled a wrist injury, conjunctivitis, suspected ear infections, gastro and a possible fractured arm – and that’s just one child.

It’s clear urgent care is stretched. In January, I waited for four hours with my one-year-old to see an urgent-care doctor for a wrist injury, which had miraculously healed by the time we were seen at 10.30pm. Late by anyone’s standards, never mind a toddler – who thankfully went from hyperand-giddy-tired to quiet-and-cuddlytired, skipping any crying and grumpiness along the way.

The brimming waiting room, the obvious injuries, the people who were bleeding: it was clear why we were not being seen, but that did little to ease the frustration and agitation of some. Our only other consolation was the doctor – who was lovely, thorough, but clearly harried – apologising for how long we’d had to wait and telling me the wait time at the emergency department that night was nine hours.

Waiting four hours on a weeknight with a baby is bad enough, but the thought of having to wait nine makes me nauseous.

Earlier this month, a mysteriously acquired arm injury – the perils of having an older brother – resulted in four consecutive night and day trips to urgent care as a suspected pulled elbow became a suspected fracture, to a cast-check that turned into needing a new cast, and another cast check. And, finally, the fracture-clinic appointment a week later, when the cast was removed and we were told it probably was a pulled elbow after all.

If proposed changes to the ACC contract with urgent-care clinics go ahead, it seems routine follow-up fracture appointments might have to be at the hospital. The corporation has proposed changes to the Urgent Care Clinic Service Contract, meaning funding of patients’ initial consultations would increase after hours, but follow-up appointments – such as replacing a cast – would now come under a single consultation code, scrapping the complex consult code.