Dr Ruth Arnold appeared before the Health Outcomes and Access to Health and Hospital Services in Rural, Regional and Remote NSW inquiry last October in her role as rural chair of the NSW Medical Staff Executive Council.

During that sitting, she spoke on a 10-point submission from the NSW MSEC.

The inquiry report, which was tabled on Thursday, made 44 recommendations for the improvement of health outcomes in regional and remote areas, with its overall findings confirming patients in the majority of remote and rural areas have a greater chance of premature death than their metropolitan counterparts.

"I think [the report] confirms what a lot of us who work in rural and regional health know and that is that our current health system is not good enough in regional and rural areas, let's just be blunt," Dr Arnold said.

"The report has confirmed the problem, it has made some good recommendations. They must be followed through."

Dr Arnold pointed out the report had identified problems with Telehealth, recommending it be better supported by increased staffing levels on the ground, which the MSEC submission had also detailed.

"The Telehealth model just needs to be overhauled. It's just not good enough having remote, overseas people who are disconnected with the community," Dr Arnold said.

"But if you have a Telehealth, or a virtual hospital, that has the support of clinicians - nurses and paramedics - who are working with medics, but actually there in person then that is obviously going to be a better model.

"There was also recommendation for a health ombudsman to be an independent body where problems with an administration could be taken for an independent review.

"I think that is very important."

Dr Arnold said one of the key things that regional and rural areas struggle with was what she described as the Federal-State divide when it came to funding.

"It's unhelpful," she said.

She said overhauling transports systems was also a "very sensible recommendation".

"We are tying up our paramedics, which particularly hurts rural and regional communities," she said.

"Our paramedics are a valuable resource, they are fantastic healthcare professionals. They can sometimes help out in smaller hospitals and they need to be available for the more critically unwell people and if you can have other transportation services that work longer hours to preserve the paramedics to do what they need to do, that would be of great benefit."

Overall, the report reflected a rural and remote health system in crisis.

"It's never been worse," Dr Arnold said. "We are really very, very overstretched at the moment. There are just not enough resources, understaffed, a lack of beds pretty much across all facilities."

She said it was up to both tiers of government to fix it.

"It's a federal and state issue in no uncertain terms and it will not be fixed in rural and regional areas without a complete overhaul of the federal and state model."

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