Ensuring rural and regional patients are supported on their medical journey
Fixing the Patient Assistance Transport Scheme
Ensuring rural and regional patients are supported on their medical journey
What we are proposing...
An elected Hurn Liberal Government will fix the Patient Assistance Transport Scheme (PATS) to make it easier for people in regional and rural South Australia to access the health care they deserve.
Labor have not made any meaningful changes to PATS since 2022, while a wholesome review of the scheme hasn’t occurred since 2014.
Rural and regional South Australian’s continue to battle with complex paperwork, long administrative wait times, and rigid eligibility requirements due to distance.
Under a Liberal Government, the eligibility of the program will be expanded to include cumulative travel for those who live greater than 50 kilometres and less than 100 kilometres from treatment locations, and travel more than 200km in a week. Unlike Labor this will cover all specialist treatments, not just renal and oncology.
We will also increase the overnight accommodation rate to $110, and index this yearly to ensure the rate keeps up with inflation.
To address the immediate and ongoing backlog, we will inject a further $500,000 in ongoing funding for the hiring of four full time additional administrative officers to clear the backlog of claims and improve future processing times.
Recognising the critical work the Ronald McDonald House does to support regional and rural families, $8 million will be provided to help them secure land to build a bigger accommodation service.
This is part of our plan for a better health system.