Making it easier for regional patients who need to travel for healthcare
By Ian Rogers
The NSW Government is enhancing healthcare access for people in rural and regional areas, offering financial support to over 41,400 patients through the Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme (IPTAAS) in the past year.
IPTAAS helps patients who need to travel long distances for specialist care that isn’t available locally by providing financial assistance. Thanks to increased subsidies, NSW patients are receiving more reimbursements, with the average payment reaching a record high of $482 per patient.
In 2023-24, the number of approved IPTAAS applications rose to 99,600, a significant increase of 21,200 from the previous year. Applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients also grew, with 8,500 applications, up by 2,200 from the previous year.
By easing the financial strain on rural residents, IPTAAS is making a difference for people like Noeline Nicholls from Pilliga, who regularly travels nearly 100 kilometers to visit Aboriginal Health Worker Jacob Shanley at Tamworth Hospital’s Healthy Deadly Foot Clinic for essential care.
In total, $48.8 million in IPTAAS claims were distributed across NSW in 2023-24, supporting 41,417 patients in accessing specialist healthcare.
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.
Easing the financial strain on rural patients needing to travel for healthcare is just one aspect of the NSW Government’s broader efforts to enhance access to care in regional, rural, and remote communities.
These initiatives include:
- 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.”
