When it comes to access to health services, migrant and refugee women in Australia consistently experience poorer health access and often poorer health outcomes. This is no different for access to specialist care, where migrant and refugee women face a host of barriers to access including exclusion from Medicare and lack of culturally and linguistically responsive services.
The impacts of this exclusion are severe, with migrant and refugee women reporting particularly troubling outcomes as a result of lack of access to medical specialists, especially during pregnancy and birth.
However, there are significant opportunities to improve migrant and refugee women’s access to specialist care in Australia that build on strong, already existing work. Indeed, there are also opportunities to strengthen preventative health approaches to include migrant and refugee women to ultimately reduce the need for specialist intervention.
This submission draws on MCWH’s research and practice insight on migrant and refugee women’s access to healthcare to provide evidence on and respond to all terms of reference for the Inquiry into Access to and Affordability of Medical Specialists in Australia. From this evidence-base, MCWH makes 11 recommendations.