Fixing Healthcare for People with Intellectual Disability: The Urgent Need for Action

Call for action – Our Health Still Counts Campaign.

In 2023, the Disability Royal Commission reported on the ongoing systemic neglect facing people with intellectual disability in the healthcare system.

The Federal Government has already funded the development of the National Roadmap for Improving the Health of People with Intellectual Disability (‘the Roadmap’), released in 2021.

The Roadmap sets out key steps needed to fix healthcare for people with intellectual disability including things like longer GP consultations and better training for healthcare professionals.

Not nearly enough of the key steps have been taken, and people with intellectual disability are still dying due to inadequate healthcare.

The Roadmap identified 72 short-term ‘actions’ to complete within 3 years. But so far, only 9 of them have been completed.

Health care professionals don’t understand how to include and support people with intellectual disabilities in their own healthcare.

People with intellectual disability are still much more likely to be hospitalised for preventable causes.

Doctors are still not getting the essential training to treat people with intellectual disability.

The campaign is calling for the government to:

1. Implement the Roadmap: A renewed, timely commitment to full and effective implementation of the National Roadmap for Improving the Health of People with Intellectual Disability.
2. Training for doctors: Commit to action that will ensure health professionals and students get the training they need to provide quality health care to people with intellectual disability.
3. Incentivise GP care: Help doctors to spend more time with people with intellectual disability. People with intellectual disability are still dying decades earlier than other people.

Bayley House fully supports this campaign and encourages people who access our services to consider joining.