Patients from rural NSW are referred to Dubbo for medical treatment (the majority who qualify for IPTAAS subsidies) & require appropriate short-term accommodation. Macquarie Home Stay opened in January 2019 with 17 units and provides a culturally appropriate, safe & welcoming place for all people in the central west, north western & western NSW districts (where many travel 250 to 350kms or more each way) to seek treatment. Treatments can include maternity, emergency, paediatric, orthopaedic, ENT, dialysis, gynaecology, urology, day surgery, tests & scans, specialist appointments, surgery, general admission to hospital, ICU, palliative, rehab, family support & so on in Dubbo, as their closest major regional centre. The new Western Cancer Centre draws patients and their families from high population centres north, south, east and west of Dubbo (for the PET CT scanner there is nothing available west of the Blue Mountains). These new services are delivering life-saving care much closer to home, with a strong intention to make sure patients could be better supported by their loved ones while undertaking treatment. We provide a niche accommodation facility for our regional communities from across one third of NSW. What we achieve as a result of these people accessing our facility is so much more - the health and well being of our communities, connectedness, quality of life and emotional support. We are actively pursuing funding support to help us expand our accomodation facility, we want to build more units across 3 new areas to cope with the demand on our facility. Let’s have a conversation about what that might look like.
