That ICPA (Aust) requests that a permanent Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) item number for telehealth consultations is assigned to telehealth Allied Health Services, specialists and consultations, including but not limited to Speech Pathology, Paediatricians and Psychologists, where they aren’t already available, to support the specific educational needs and learning difficulties of geographically isolated children.
Many allied health services are unavailable to rural and remote families.
Barriers are:
- that people have to travel extremely long distances.
- People have to join lengthy waiting lists to access practitioners located in their closest regional or metropolitan areas.
- There is little or no access to Allied Health Services, particularly for children with special needs and developmental delays (often on more than one domain).
- financial hardship caused by travel and accommodation costs while accessing treatment and not able to access IPTAAS. For example, a community may have a visiting specialist but they already have full books and waiting lists of over 18 months is not unusual but because there is a service available, families are not eligible.
- low socio-economic families living in rural and remote areas do not have the means to travel for treatment.
- rural and remote people are often unable to find their way around or unfamiliar with metropolitan areas in order to access treatment.
- most people needing NDIS plans are unable to navigate the system and without access to services they are unable to utilise their plans.
- we are aware of many families rejecting NDIS plans due to lack of access to services.
Utilisation of telehealth services can be of great benefit to families in geographically isolated locations who would otherwise have to travel considerable distances or encounter lengthy delays to access face to face consultations with relevant health professionals.
Students with developmental difficulties require frequent and timely consultations and these can be enabled via telehealth services for many families otherwise unable to access allied health professionals due to living in rural and remote areas.
Some specialist consultations, such as speech pathology, can be satisfactorily delivered using telehealth services where the technology is available. These services are already providing improved access to health services for some children in geographically isolated areas. The cost to families to access such services should also be equitable.
