National telehealth services lose funding

eHealthNews.nz: Digital Patient

Monday, 8 July 2024

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

A free online doctor service provided by Whakarongorau Aotearoa / New Zealand Telehealth Services has lost funding as part of changes to the Covid-19 response.

Martin Hefford, director living well at Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora confirmed funding has been pulled from three virtual care services provided by Whakarongorau.

These are; a non-public facing clinical line for health professionals, free doctor support via Healthline, and the Covid Healthline.

“This is because as New Zealand has moved beyond the Covid-19 pandemic response, demand for specific Covid-related services – including some telehealth services – has reduced over time,” he says.

eHealthNews previously reported that doctors at Whakarongorau were providing telehealth consultations and writing prescriptions for people left without access to a GP due to Cyclone Gabrielle.

The online doctors also provided care for people who are not registered with a GP or were having difficulty seeing their doctor, as well as supporting ambulance crews to help keep patients safely at home.

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When interviewed in April 2023, Whakarongorau chief clinical officer Ruth Large said the organisation set up an internal doctor service in response to the pandemic, which was initially a clinical advice line, taking calls from GPs, pharmacists, midwives and nurses.

The service was later expanded to support Covid-19 patients in the community and in April 2023 had 24 doctors working across the motu providing a 24/7 service.

Over the previous six months, Whakarongorau doctors had seen 1800 patients and had 600 contacts with ambulance frontline staff.

Whakarongorau CIO Mike Mulvaney presented on a recent NZ Telehealth Forum webinar on AI and Telehealth where he talked about the scale-up of infrastructure and operations within the organisation to meet the need generated by the Covid pandemic.

Between 2020 to 2022 the national telehealth service grew from 500 to 3,500 staff.

Mulvaney said he is now focused on how to use smarter systems and processes, and emerging technologies such as AI, to improve operational efficiency, as well as “radically change and improve some of our core services”.

A new innovation strategy is focused on meeting the need if another situation like Covid-19 arises, but in a much more efficient way.

“Also to improve lives and help people get the job done and deal with the fact that resources are fewer and fewer, but we still have the demand and the volume,” he told the webinar.

Opportunities to improve efficiency include the use of AI transcription and Whakarongorau is building functionality into their internal telehealth patient management system to automatically summarise notes into a standard format, he said.

Health NZ says the closure of the Covid-19 telehealth services means callers will now be redirected to other services if they need further health advice and support and Healthline nurses and paramedics will continue to be available.

Two services being are retained until 20 December 2024: a rebranded Vaccination Helpline will provide non-clinical advice and support for all funded vaccinations and the disability Helpline and text service will continue to provide advice and support for Whaikaha/disabled people and their whānau.

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