Waikato prepares for significant telehealth uptake

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Picture: Emergency doctor Shameem Safih conducting a virtual consult

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Waikato DHB has expanded its telehealth capability to be able to conduct up to 2000 video consults a day.

The DHB is also enabling its staff who are isolated, due to exposure to or vulnerability to Covid-19, to do consultations with patients from home.

Project management office manager Grant Lee says the number of telehealth consultations conducted by Waikato clinicians increased 800% from the two weeks prior to the DHB starting Covid-19 preparations to the two-week period ending on the 12 April.

The vast majority of these were phone consults, but the number of video consultations is also on the rise.

Lee says the DHB’s experience with the SmartHealth online doctor project helped inform its understanding of its telehealth capability and the arrival of Covid-19 presented an opportunity to significantly ramp up the telehealth service.

During the SmartHealth project, every consulting room in the DHB’s Meade Clinical Centre was fitted with webcam-enabled monitors and speakers and has computers able to handle video conferencing.

As part of the decommissing of SmartHealth in April 2018, Waikato switched to video conferencing software Cisco Jabber as a tool to support virtual consultations.

The solution can now support up to 170 clinician-to-patient video consults at any given time, equaling 2000 a day if necessary.

Patients are sent a link that opens in a browser or they can download a free app on their iPhone.

He says a key benefit is that the platform is already integrated into the DHB’s patient administration system iPM, which allows the hospitals to track the patient indicators within iPM and report on them.

Telehealth consultations are ideal for patients who are confirmed as Covid-19 positive, as well as vulnerable and rural patients.

“It won’t work for everyone, but being able to offer video capability is beneficial to a fairly large proportion of patients in our DHB,” Lee tells eHealthNews.nz.

More than half of all booking clarks have been trained on how to book patients a virtual consult.

Some clinicians have already approached the team to say they could do their entire clinic virtually as long as the patients are able. It is then up to booking clarks to ensure the patients have a reasonable device and broadband or mobile plan.

Lee says the DHB is hoping to get some targeted funding for rural and vulnerable communities to ensure they are not left behind in the switch to virtual care.

Clinicians can also do video consults from home, as some senior medical officers are in, or close to, the Covid-19 risk category themselves and have already been isolated subject to equipment and internet access.

“It’s a lot of business process change getting staff ready, but the environment is there and if clinicians want to work from home, we can facilitate that,” he says.

The telehealth team plans to submit a proposal for a wider, longer term sustainable telehealth solution as over the course of the last few weeks a number of other services have stepped forward with their own solutions and would like to have these incorporated.

“Managing a range of solutions is not sustainable and we need something that is easy, practical and integrated with our patient administration system,” Lee says.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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