During treatment there’s nothing better than home. However sometimes people need to travel to another place to get treatment. Diagnoses and treatments can take weeks or months. Patients and carers need to find a place to sleep nearby to their health services. Accommodation costs can add up. There are several ways of containing costs. NSW Health provides partial reimbursement of travel costs through their Isolated Patient Transport and Accommodation Assistance Scheme referred to as IPTAAS. Click here for our IPTAAS fact sheet. Some hospitals and cancer treatment services provide low-cost hospital-allied accommodation services.

Social Workers and Accommodation Officers help patients and carers to organise accommodation. The Cancer Council Helpline 13 11 20 can also assist. In 2009, Cancer Council NSW led a collaboration to identify ways to improve hospital-allied patient and carer accommodation. The findings of this review are available in this summary report: Accommodating Change Summary Report Cancer Council NSW contributes to several community-owned hospital-allied accommodation services.