New research commissioned by the NSW Council of Social Services pinpoints which patient cohorts are the most likely to delay GP visits due to cost.
Single parent households, unemployed working-age people and those on a low income are more likely than their peers to avoid a visit to the GP due to cost, according to new research out of the University of Canberra.
The research was commissioned by the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) as a follow-up to a 2020 report it released, and the data was collected in 2023 from a sample of NSW residents.
Crucially, the collection window came before the introduction of tripled bulk-billing incentives for children, people on low income and older Australians.
Broadly speaking, about 10% of people across the state said they were avoiding their GP due to cost, up from 3% in NCOSS’ 2020 report (noting that the 2020 report featured data collected in 2019).
There were significant increases in the proportion of people delaying care across every single age and demographic sector.
At a whole-of-state level, the cohorts most likely to put off care due to cost were people aged 15 to 24 at 11.1%, low-income people at 11.4%, single parent households at 12.1% and unemployed people or people who were working age but not in the workforce, at 12.5%.
The least likely to avoid were people aged 65 or older.
“We’ve seen a really strong connection between people living in rural and regional areas of New South Wales and a degradation in ability to access care,” NCOSS CEO Cara Varian told The Medical Republic.
“The further away from Sydney you are, the harder it is to access care at the moment, and that’s a shift from four years ago.”
While 6.4% of Greater Sydney residents said they delayed or avoided the GP due to cost, this proportion shot up to 15.4% for the rest of the state.
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As many as one in five single parent households, people on low income and people aged 15 to 24 living outside of Sydney admitted to avoiding their GP due to cost.
“Despite the fact that we’ve known about the [patient cost] struggles for a number of years now and the fact that the government has tried to put in some changes around the support that they’re providing for bulk billing, it’s clearly not enough,” Ms Varian said.
“Because within a cost-of-living crisis where people are having to decide between food, rent or healthcare, people are finding that they’re not able to afford healthcare.
“While it has been most impactful to those on lower incomes, it’s actually touching people across all the different income ranges as well.”
