The NSW Government is improving access to healthcare for people living in rural and regional communities, providing financial assistance to more than 41,400 patients in the past year through the Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme (IPTAAS).
IPTAAS provides financial assistance to patients who need to travel long distances for specialist healthcare, not available locally.
NSW patients have also received more money back in their pockets thanks to increased subsidies, with the average reimbursement per patient higher than ever before at $482.
In 2023-24, 99,600 applications were approved, an increase of 21,200 applications from the previous year.
The number of IPTAAS applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients has also increased, up by 2,200 to 8,500 in 2023-24.
IPTAAS is reducing the financial burden on rural NSW residents like Noeline Nicholls who lives in Pilliga, almost 100 kilometres west of Narrabri. Noeline regularly visits Aboriginal Health Worker Jacob Shanley at Tamworth Hospital's Healthy Deadly Foot Clinic to receive essential medical care.
In the 2023-24 financial year, $48,885,696 was provided in IPTAAS claims across NSW, helping 41,417 patients access specialist health treatment.
IPTAAS payments for 2023-24 by local health district are:
- Central Coast: $339,168
- Far West: $3,613,345
- Hunter New England: $12,757,239
- Illawarra Shoalhaven: $1,297,680
- Mid North Coast: $4,764,257
- Murrumbidgee: $7,961,022
- Nepean Blue Mountains: $345,373
- Northern NSW: $3,243,997
- Northern Sydney: $66,629
- South Eastern Sydney: $50,996
- South Western Sydney: $327,845
- Southern NSW: $5,274,675
- Sydney: $13,672
- Western NSW: $8,517,565
- Western Sydney: $53,516
- Outside of NSW: $258,716*
*Applications from locations outside of NSW are patients who reside in another state and are donating an organ or tissue to a NSW resident, or patients who reside on Lord Howe Island.
Reducing the financial burden for country patients to travel for their healthcare is just part of a comprehensive range of measures the NSW Government is embracing to improve access to care in our regional, rural and remote communities, including:
- Delivering more health worker accommodation in the bush;
- Doubling rural health worker incentives for the most critical and hard to fill positions to improve recruitment and retention;
- Boosting doctors in our regional GP surgeries as well as hospitals through the single employer model; and
- Deploying an extra 500 regional paramedics.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Health Ryan Park:
"We're making it easier for regional people to access healthcare through the Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme (IPTAAS). More people are accessing IPTAAS than ever before and they're getting more money back in their pocket thanks to increased subsidies.
"We know that people living in rural, regional and remote NSW sometimes have to travel a long way for specialist care. The financial assistance they get through IPTAAS not only helps cover the costs of travel and accommodation, it can mean the difference between seeking care or not.
"Pleasingly, we're seeing big increases in the number of people accessing IPTAAS, including those using the scheme for the first time, which means the money we're providing is getting straight to the people who need it the most.
"Through important initiatives like IPTAAS, we will continue to support residents of NSW to access high-quality, timely and appropriate healthcare, particularly those living in rural, regional and remote communities."
Quotes attributable to Pilliga resident Noeline Nicholls:
"If it wasn't for IPTAAS, I wouldn't be here.
"Where we live, we travel to get food, petrol and medical. If I didn't have IPTAAS, I wouldn't have been able to receive the medical care I needed."
