OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to explore the excess travel time of patients receiving radiotherapy in Victoria, Australia. Radiotherapy requires specialised facilities which limits providers, particularly in regional areas, whether being delivered as a public or private service. Long distances between regional and metropolitan centres, private health insurance rate and patient preference potentially lead to large differences in travel time for treatment. Using a state-wide linked dataset, we explore the patterns of patient travel when receiving radiotherapy.

METHODS: Driving times between postcode centroids of a patient’s home address and the radiotherapy facilities were calculated using the Google Distance Matrix API. This was in conjunction with a state-wide retrospective linked dataset. We calculated excess travel as the difference between the closest facility geographically and the realised travel time of patients. Excess travel was further analysed by the public or private status of a facility and by remoteness levels as defined by the Australian Statistical Geographical Standard.

RESULTS: Of delivered courses 40.5% (n=33,011) and 59.1% (n=48,207) were delivered at private or public facilities respectively. Private and public providers had 41.9% and 49.9% of patients respectively travelling an excess time with the median excess time being 10.9 minutes and 11.1 minutes respectively..

The median (and 97.5^th percentile) excess private and public travel times stratified by remoteness were 9.37 (33.6), 23.6 (135), and 91.7 (146) minutes and 7.97 (42), 23 (118), and 73 (132) minutes for metropolitan, inner regional and outer regional classifications respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the excess travel burden of radiotherapy patients living in regional and remote areas while also illustrating extreme cases requiring significantly greater travel on top of this. Additionally, we calculated one-way travel distance, radiotherapy courses can be up to 8 weeks in duration requiring multiple hospital visits a week and thus the actual impact could be much higher.