INDEPENDENT MP for Murray Helen Dalton says she agrees with a NSW parliamentary report that rural health care in NSW is in a “perilous” state, but the report fails to recommend two strategies to improve staff numbers and safety among its 44 recommendations.
Mrs Dalton said the NSW crossbench committee report on the quality of health care in rural, regional and remote areas, released last Thursday, failed to address safe staffing ratios in hospitals and did not recommend increasing base pay rates for medical staff.
“We need the NSW Government to mandate safe patient-to-staff ratios in all our hospitals, as Victoria has done,” Mrs Dalton said, pointing to the SAFE Patient Care Amendment Bill passed by Victoria in 2020 to outline minimum nurse-to-patient numbers in hospitals.
Mrs Dalton said while the report, titled Health Outcomes and Access to Health and Hospital Services in Rural and Remote NSW, recommended a review of pay structures, medical staff were still not incentivised to move to rural and regional NSW.
“At present, NSW health professionals and workers can get superior pay and conditions working on Sydney’s North Shore than they get in a rural town like Deniliquin. So why would anyone move out west?
“The report recommends reviewing pay structures, but what we need is immediate increases in base rates of pay and more financial incentives for those working in rural areas.”
Aside from finding that medical staff were “significantly under resourced” in rural and regional areas, the report said a lack of regional patient transport services increased the workload on Ambulance NSW and that First Nations people continued to experience discrimination when seeking medical assistance.
The report recommended increasing the reimbursement rates for accommodation and per kilometre travel as part of the Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme, increasing rural GP and specialist training positions, and aligning pay structures for training doctors with their metro counterparts.
It also recommended more engagement with local elders to improve cultural safety for First Nations people.
The committee also noted a “culture of fear” affecting rural and regional medical staff being able to raise concerns about patient safety, staff welfare and inadequate resources.
Mrs Dalton supported the appointment of a health administration ombudsman but said such an office “needed to be properly staffed and have real powers”.
“The fact that hundreds of submissions to the rural health inquiry were anonymous tells you the extent to which government have bullied and silenced our health workforce,” Mrs Dalton said.
“Nurses feel they have nowhere to go when they are bullied or harassed. At present, management make secretive internal investigations, sweep complaints under the carpet and punish the victims.”
But Mrs Dalton said the six-month window for the NSW Government was “too long” and “direct financial rescue packages” were needed to “keep GP practices” open as longer-term strategies were developed.
Minister for Regional Health Bronnie Taylor said the inquiry shone a light where it needed to, hearing directly from rural and regional communities, patients, their families and healthcare workers.
“To those who shared their deeply personal experiences, thank you. The NSW Government has listened and accepts that there is a need to do more to improve patient care in regional and rural locations,” Mrs Taylor said.
“Implementing bold new measures to attract key health workers to work in our regional health facilities and retaining that workforce will be a key focus of mine – everything is on the table when it comes to improving health outcomes in rural and regional NSW.
A formal response to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into health outcomes and access to health and hospital services in rural, regional and remote New South Wales will be handed down in coming months.
