Kinkaya Urgent Care: The new kids health centre offering an alternative to Perth Children’s Hospital

The owners of a new private urgent care centre for WA kids are aiming to offer the first real alternative to Perth Children’s Hospital for non-emergency cases. Kinkaya Urgent Care will open in Innaloo on April 3, offering a walk-in medical service with a focus on paediatrics. The centre will have X-ray equipment, pathology, doctors, in-house paediatric specialists for kids with more complex presentations and coffee machines for parents. The centre is the brainchild of husband and wife Justin Withnall and Smriti Shah, who have spent most of their careers working in regional and rural Australia. They have teamed up with fellow doctor Chris Peyton and his wife Haley to create the first centre, which will be open from 8am until 10pm every day of the year. Dr Withnall said they hoped to ease the pressure on the overwhelmed PCH emergency department by seeing patients whose needs were urgent, but not life-threatening. Examples of urgent care cases include sprains or broken bones, bites, minor burns, cuts requiring stitches, glue and x-rays. “What we’ve tried to do is take all the good bits about working in rural centres and bring them to a metropolitan area, everything from the size of the clinic to the ready access to specialist care and having that close working relationship with specialist paediatricians,” he said. “We’re not trying to replace EDs, but trying to offer a service where we can divert some of those not-so-sick kids away from PCH and provide parents with the reassurance they’re getting paediatric focused care. “PCH is a world class facility, we hope that we are simply able to be a small support for the incredible work they do and the lives they save day in day out.” Patients will be privately billed, at a cost similar to other urgent care centres in Perth, with Medicare rebates available. In last week’s Budget the Federal Government announced funding for another six bulk-billed Medicare urgent care clinics in WA, in addition to the eight already operating. St John WA also operates six privately billed urgent care centres across Perth.

Kinkaya Urgent Care: The new kids health centre offering an alternative to Perth Children’s Hospital

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