Hundreds of people with disabilities are "languishing" in public hospitals while they wait for adequate support, leaving them vulnerable to harm and infection, an inquiry has been told. or signup to continue reading Workforce shortages and a lack of disability accommodation in rural areas has led to an increase in NDIS participants staying in hospital, Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Mark Spittal said. NSW hospitals had 294 such people yet to be discharged in early October because no NDIS supports were in place or their assessments had not been finalised.
"Hospitals are the providers of last resort for people whose supports have broken down," Mr Spittal told the federal inquiry examining the experience of rural NDIS participants in Dubbo on Thursday. Being in a hospital setting left people with disabilities at greater risk, he said. "That's certainly not the place that somebody with a significant disability should be languishing.
"Their risk of acquiring infection, the risk of being marginalised because the acute care needs of somebody else in the ward will take predominance and, as a result, being unintentionally harmed are very, very high." An NDIS assessment can take several weeks involving a number of health practitioners at a time when GPs in major regional centres like Dubbo and Orange had closed their books, he said. "If you're a highly complex person with highly-complex disabilities needing access to primary care and you do not already have a (GP), y.