Access Denied: Australians Locked Out of Quality Healthcare

This report explores the experiences people in NSW have with healthcare, including their GP, medical specialists, dentists and hospital emergency departments.

Conducted by NCOSS in collaboration with the University of Canberra, this research builds on previous studies from 2020, offering insights into how different demographic groups access health care and experience challenges around affordability, wait times and satisfaction levels.

There are two reports for this research:

1. The Key Insights Report provides an overview of the key themes and findings. It looks at who is most affected and includes case studies from people interviewed by NCOSS.

2. The full report Access Denied: Australians Locked Out of Quality Healthcare presents a full picture of the key findings using the data collected. It highlights the difference between the 2020 and 2024 results.

Complementing these reports are tools to help you explore the results across NSW.

How does your region compare? View the factsheets for areas across NSW.

The Interactive Mapping Tool allows you to visualise the data on a local level. These maps allow you to toggle between different service types, including general practitioners, medical specialists, dental professionals, and hospital emergency department. It also shows changes since 2020.

Delve deeper into the data

This data snapshot provides a view of the overall patient experience results by service type, regionality and low income status.

View the data dashboard here. It allows users to drill-down to individual small geographic areas to see detailed, how they compare to NSW averages, and how they have changed since 2020.

If you are interested in the raw data files with SA2 results, they are available on request. Please contact advocacy@ncoss.org.au for access.