Hundreds of people with disabilities are "languishing" in public hospitals while they wait for adequate support, leaving them vulnerable to harm and infection, an inquiry has been told.
Workforce shortages and a lack of disability accommodation in rural areas has led to an increase in NDIS participants staying in hospital, Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Mark Spittal said.
NSW hospitals had 294 such people yet to be discharged in early October because no NDIS supports were in place or their assessments had not been finalised.
"Hospitals are the providers of last resort for people whose supports have broken down," Mr Spittal told the federal inquiry examining the experience of rural NDIS participants in Dubbo on Thursday.
Being in a hospital setting left people with disabilities at greater risk, he said.
"That's certainly not the place that somebody with a significant disability should be languishing.
"Their risk of acquiring infection, the risk of being marginalised because the acute care needs of somebody else in the ward will take predominance and, as a result, being unintentionally harmed are very, very high."
An NDIS assessment can take several weeks involving a number of health practitioners at a time when GPs in major regional centres like Dubbo and Orange had closed their books, he said.
"If you're a highly complex person with highly-complex disabilities needing access to primary care and you do not already have a (GP), your chances of being able to execute that are virtually zero," Mr Spittal said.
People living with disabilities in small towns were also having to move and leave their families behind to access specialised support, he said.
Parkes, in central west NSW, is struggling with a shortage of GPs, while a Salvation Army 70-bed aged care home recently closed.
Several elderly residents had to move to interstate facilities, Parkes Shire Mayor Neil Westcott said.
"There's just nowhere else for them to attend," Mr Westcott told the inquiry.
"Doing anything in the regions is seemingly harder."
The inquiry, which has sat in Darwin, Broome and Canberra, is looking at the experience of rural participants and the availability of supports, including culturally appropriate care for Indigenous people.
Mr Spittal said the committee should consider a model in which health services and non-government organisations pool their disability workforce.
"If we can find far more effective ways to collaborate, to do place-based planning ... we will get benefits for both systems."
The inquiry will hold a hearing in regional Victoria in November.
