A young man with stomach pain is faced with his health care options in one of the campaign's TV advertisements
22 June 2016
A new advertising campaign has been launched to Western Australians to consider alternative health care options to Emergency Departments (EDs).
The campaign aims to reduce the number of people attending hospital EDs with minor illnesses or injuries by highlighting a number of other health services available for non-emergency issues.
The campaign complements current information available on the HealthyWA website, including a symptom checker tool where a person could enter their symptoms and get trusted advice on what to do next.
In 2015, Western Australian hospitals recorded 1,009,707 ED attendances, an increase of 49 per cent – or about 330,000 attendances – since 2005.
About 130,000 of these visits could have been addressed by other health care options such as GPs and healthdirect or appropriate self-assessment.
The health care options campaign will include TV, print, digital and social media and will run for an initial period during the winter months.