The National Rural Health Alliance (the Alliance) responded to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly Committee on Community Services’ Inquiry into the Health Services Amendment (Splitting of the Murrumbidgee Local Health District) Bill 2025.
While the Alliance’s response does not take a position on the split of the Murrumbidgee Local Health District (LHD) itself, it highlights broader issues affecting rural health access, funding, and workforce capacity.
The Alliance proposed potential solutions to support the health system, including:
- Defining the levels of access to care that should be expected in rural and remote areas.
- Undertaking integrated planning at a regional level to define the best service approaches to meeting local needs.
- Ensuring rural hospitals are funded equitably and have parity to meet additional costs, tyranny of distance and workforce development.
- Establishing coordinated and flexible (blended or block) funding for regions with thin or failed markets and limited infrastructure to support implementation of regional plans.
- Supporting localised, multidisciplinary collaborative service delivery models rather than assuming an urban based model is better and delivers the outcomes needed.
- Improving workforce pipelines, recruitment and retention in rural and remote areas.
Regardless of whether the Murrumbidgee LHD is split, the Alliance stresses that rural communities require more, not less, investment. Addressing the widening funding gap, as reported in The Forgotten Health Spend: A Report on the Expenditure Deficit in Rural Australia, and improving access to care are essential for both social equity and economic productivity.