{"id":13921,"date":"2025-06-10T06:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T18:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13921"},"modified":"2025-06-10T06:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T18:02:11","slug":"how-much-do-urgent-care-fees-vary-within-21km-in-auckland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=13921","title":{"rendered":"How much do urgent care fees vary within 21km in Auckland?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>t&#8217;s lunchtime on a Tuesday at the White Cross\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/563570\/consultation-on-future-of-mental-health-facility-rauaroha-segar-house-extended\">urgent care<\/a>\u00a0clinic in the south Auckland suburb of Ot\u0101huhu.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today is our fourth time in four weeks and today we&#8217;ve had to pay $150. So the twins are free, but me and my partner is $65 each.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A mother told me the family had to come back to the clinic for another prescription, because sickness was spreading at home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The virus that my daughters have caught doesn&#8217;t go away unless you get antibiotics. And now we&#8217;ve caught it so we need antibiotics too, which their antibiotics won&#8217;t work for us. It&#8217;s just getting worse and worse. And if they get better and we&#8217;ve got it, we just end up giving it (the virus) back to them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"block-item\">\n<div class=\"c-play-controller u-blocklink\" data-uuid=\"b3695857-f84e-402c-96d4-666eff48f156\">\n<div>\n<article class=\"relative w-full h-screen max-h-[calc(10rem*var(--base-multiplier))] min-h-[calc(6rem*var(--base-multiplier))] bg-off-white\">\n<div class=\"flex h-full\">\n<div class=\"relative aspect-square h-full flex-none overflow-hidden\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"absolute h-full w-full object-cover\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--mBJED6vk--\/c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,h_100,q_auto,w_100\/v1671588070\/4LGFBQ6_first_up_internal_cover_png?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" aria-hidden=\"true\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-grow flex-col justify-between overflow-hidden p-3\">\n<div class=\"flex flex-col gap-2\">\n<h3 class=\"order-2 mb-2 text-black line-clamp-2 text-sm\">Big fee variation at AK White Cross urgent care clinics<\/h3>\n<div class=\"order-1 flex items-baseline gap-3 text-xs leading-tight\"><span class=\"font-sans-semibold line-clamp-1 text-heavy-grey\">First Up<\/span><span class=\"whitespace-nowrap tabular-nums text-xs text-heavy-grey\">9 June 2025<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"flex items-center justify-between gap-2\">\n<div class=\"flex items-center gap-3\">\n<div class=\"flex items-center\"><\/div>\n<p><button class=\"inline-flex items-center justify-center whitespace-nowrap rounded-full border text-sm transition-colors *:transition-colors disabled:cursor-not-allowed font-sans-normal px-2 py-[calc(0.1rem*var(--base-multiplier))] py-[calc(0.1rem*var(--base-multiplier))] pl-1 leading-tight hover:text-white *:hover:text-white hover:bg-brand hover:border-brand *:text-dark-grey border-white bg-white text-black [&amp;&gt;svg]:text-brand !pr-2 [&amp;&gt;span]:text-black [&amp;&gt;span]:hover:!text-white\" aria-label=\"Queue Big fee variation at AK White Cross urgent care clinics\"><span class=\"mr-2\">Queue<\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<div class=\"ml-auto flex items-center gap-2 text-black\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Ot\u0101huhu clinic is close to home for the family, and it&#8217;s cheaper than other urgent care clinics.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the most affordable one to take us in this fast. Our Local Doctors (a GP clinic) can&#8217;t take us in for another three weeks. The last time we&#8217;ve been to the doctors for ourselves was probably two years ago. We just tough it out because it&#8217;s too much amongst all the other bills that we have to pay.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today we&#8217;re gonna have to cut short on food. We haven&#8217;t done our grocery shopping for the week yet, so it&#8217;s gonna be what the twins need, and then whatever&#8217;s left.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>By &#8220;take us in this fast&#8221;, the mother meant: &#8220;eight hours with two two-year-olds, gonna be great.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As part of the Budget this year, Health Minister Simeon Brown promised greater accessibility to urgent and after-hours healthcare in the regions, with several new 24-hour services planned around New Zealand.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.rnztools.nz\/rnz\/image\/upload\/s--qHsCBRS9--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1737495559\/4KD6P8W_Image_15_jpg?_a=BACCd2AD\" alt=\"Incoming Health Minister Simeon Brown speaks to media at the National Party caucus retreat in Hamilton\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">Health Minister Simeon Brown.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0RNZ\/Marika Khabazi<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Meanwhile in Auckland, urgent care is accessible but the fees, and the wait times, are quite varied around the city.<\/p>\n<p>Three hours later, I crossed path with the family again &#8211; 7km away at the White Cross clinic in Mount Wellington.<\/p>\n<p>At White Cross Ot\u0101huhu, the cost for an un-enrolled adult without a community services card is $70. Meanwhile in Mount Wellington, the fee is $130.<\/p>\n<p>The mother said they were sent by staff at Ot\u0101huhu to Mount Wellington at no extra cost, so their wait could be shortened by half.<\/p>\n<p>They told me the Mount Wellington waiting room is much quieter than Ot\u0101huhu.<\/p>\n<p>Further south, the cheapest White Cross clinic is in Manurewa, where an un-enrolled adult without a discount pays $60, and $15 if ACC offers cover. Enrolled adults pay $18, and if they&#8217;ve got ACC coverage, it&#8217;s free.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an attractive price for many patients.<\/p>\n<p>A woman told me this is the cheapest clinic that she knows of, and she drove 10km that day to see the doctor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just for a follow up, it&#8217;s $18.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Another man told me the price is vastly different between two clinics 9km apart.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Takanini, I think the charge for a repeat prescription is around $15 to $20, but here it&#8217;s around $7 to $10.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile in Remuera, one of Auckland&#8217;s affluent suburbs, the White Cross Ascot 24\/7 charges $130 &#8211; more than double the $60 charged in Manurewa.<\/p>\n<p>A couple who just finished their consultation told me they are enrolled with the T\u0101maki Health network, so it cost them $80 in Remuera.<\/p>\n<p>They say their bill could be cheaper if they travelled to a clinic further away, but in this case, they think their health is more important than the money they could save.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was $80 because I was in pain, and this was the nearest hospital from my work,&#8221; the woman said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Where we go most of the time, it&#8217;s about $17 or $18, then if it&#8217;s after 5pm, that&#8217;s $35. But she was working here, so it was convenient for her to come here,&#8221; her partner added.<\/p>\n<p>Their wait that day was two hours.<\/p>\n<p>Malcolm Mulholland from Patient Voice Aotearoa said cost was the number one factor in determining whether patients access healthcare.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know that there are a number of families and patients out there who won&#8217;t go and see their GP, primarily because of cost. And when that situation does arise, what tends to happen is as the patient&#8217;s health deteriorates, they end up going to the ED and that&#8217;s why we are seeing ED with record number of patients.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mulholland said many factors play into how practices price their fees: location, competition, demand and funding level are just a few.<\/p>\n<p>He lives in Palmerston North, where there is only one after-hours clinic. It costs $210 to see a doctor during normal hours, and $240 on weeknights.<\/p>\n<p>The Palmerston North clinic also belongs to T\u0101maki Health, which manages the White Cross network of urgent medical clinics.<\/p>\n<p>T\u0101maki Health declined to comment, or provide a statement for this story.<\/p>\n<p>I asked Mulholland if there&#8217;s anything patients can do to cut their bill.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sadly not. I don&#8217;t know if there is much that patients can do other than try to be seen during the day. But again, you&#8217;re gonna run into problems with GP practices being full and then the wait time to see a GP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that&#8217;s a really sad state of affairs because you&#8217;re essentially asking patients to triage themselves and patients won&#8217;t always make the right decision.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And Mulholland said it all came back to the desperate need for more doctors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Patients are worried about their health. They can&#8217;t get access to a GP or a doctor, whether that be during the normal working hours or via an ED. And so they&#8217;re going wherever they think they might be seen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In May, the government announced a $164 million investment in urgent care. As part of the improvement, the agency noted it would implement a nationally consistent fee and subsidies schedule.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement to First Up, director of Living Well at Health New Zealand Martin Hefford said, &#8220;Health New Zealand is shifting from a fragmented system with wide fee variation to one that&#8217;s more transparent and predictable across the country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There would still be some variation of fees, Hefford said, but the details were not finalised yet.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>t&#8217;s lunchtime on a Tuesday at the White Cross\u00a0urgent care\u00a0clinic in the south Auckland suburb of Ot\u0101huhu. &#8220;Today is our fourth time in four weeks and today we&#8217;ve had to pay $150. So the twins are free, but me and my partner is $65 each.&#8221; A mother told me the family had to come back [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13923,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13921\/revisions\/13923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}