Healthcare funding gap widens

The widening gap in healthcare funding between rural and urban Australians has widened by a further $880 million from $6.55 billion in 2023, to $8.35 billion in 2025 and now $9.23 billion this year. The findings are in the latest report ‘Forgotten Health Spend: A Report on the Expenditure Deficit in Rural Australia 2026’ by the National Rural Health Alliance. The report calls for urgent action from the federal and state governments to ensure health equity for the more than 7.4 million Australians living in rural, regional and remote Australia. According to the report, each rural Australian receives on average $1218 less in healthcare funding each year than city residents – up $138 from last year. Those living in small rural towns of 15,000 people or less bear the greatest brunt of the systemic shortfall, receiving on average $6368 less healthcare funding per person each year. Local general practitioner Dr Christie Rodda – also co-deputy chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Rural Faculty – said the widening funding gap is closely linked to a smaller health workforce in rural areas. “The gap is also driven by less investment in public and private hospital funding and aged care services in rural and remote areas,” she said. “These are often centralised to larger centres, and also due to shifts towards urban-based telehealth services." Dr Rodda said strategies for equitable funding need to be recognised by all levels of government. “They need to work cooperatively across the health system to actively address the shortfall on health spend for rural Australians," she said. Investment is needed in growing the rural workforce across all health disciplines, investing in local models of care, support for research in rural-specific outcomes and funding for health infrastructure in regional and rural Australia. Dr Rodda said 'happily' an increase is being seen in local GP and rural generalist registrars coming through the training pipeline in our region as the government invests in more training places for those doctors. “But at the same time, we're seeing enormous difficulty in our local patients being able to access mental health care, aged care placements and publicly funded allied health services in small towns," she said. “Older patients may be approved for government funded packages to support them to stay at home, but often they then can't find reliable service providers locally." And increasingly, funding for after-hours care in small rural towns in Victoria has shifted to telehealth-based doctors rather than providing adequate funding for local rural GPs and rural generalists to provide face-to-face care to their own patients. Dr Rodda said increasing locally trained doctors, especially those originally from rural areas, with increases in Commonwealth supported places at university for study at rural regional placements, was a welcome solution “But it's only part of a much broader range of things that need to be put in place,” she said. “It has to be accompanied by coordinated rural training pathways and funded placements for those students to go on to train in regional and rural areas." Among placements included rural generalist trainees to develop advanced skills to service their community needs, and opportunities for non-GP specialist trainees to do more of their training in rural and regional areas. “There also needs to be more support for supervisors of rural GP trainees,” Dr Rodda said. With Medicare rebates, Dr Rodda said the RACGP's 2026 Health of the Nation Report has shown a significant increase in the number of GPs now fully bulk billing their patients. “Almost two thirds of Australians are now bulk billed for all their general practice care - up from 56 per cent in 2024 and 2025,” she said. "But government funding for longer consultations and complex care is still not sufficient to cover the costs of providing that care for many practices. “This means many Australians will still face out of pocket costs to see a GP if they have multiple chronic conditions or mental health concerns. And that is often the case in rural areas, where patients have worse health overall to begin with and GPs are trying to manage more issues in each consultation. Dr Helen Haines MP had lobbied the Prime Minister in Parliament on the $9.23 billion healthcare gap based on the NRHA’s recent report just days before her alleged attack.