Green Cross expands virtual care offering to struggling GPs

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Green Cross Health has significantly expanded its virtual care offerings, providing a lifeline to struggling medical practices across New Zealand.

Green Cross virtual care clinical lead Kim Hurst says telehealth platform the Doctors Online is delivering more than 300 telehealth consults per week across four practices.

The service was launched as a casual patient telehealth platform, but has developed into a regular service that fills gaps in general practices that have no permanent GPs and rely on scarce locum doctors.

Green Cross has an ownership interest in 66 general practices across the country and Hurst says the need for innovative care delivery models has become increasingly apparent over recent years, particularly among rural and remote practices.

"We noticed there were multiple practices starting to pop up with critical manpower issues, and they were all, including my own, struggling to recruit in-house to the practice," she says. 

In response, Green Cross Health rapidly scaled its virtual care team, growing from 2.8 FTE GPs earlier this year to 13 FTE GPs, working alongside a team of nurse practitioners and nurses.

A Whakatāne practice now regularly uses virtual doctors, supported by nurses and a healthcare assistant on site. Hurst says this enables all staff to work at the top of their scope and provides a sustainable model for the practice.

“The GPs provide regular sessions and join the consulting room virtually, while the patient has a nurse or healthcare assistant with them to help navigate the consult,” she explains.

While the transition to telehealth has been challenging at times, Hurst says patients have quickly adapted to seeing their doctor online. 

She says the full extent of the use of telehealth in primary care remains unknown as more practices look to virtual models to relieve the pressure on in-person appointments. 

"There is no national picture of the true extent of the use of telehealth, because a lot of it is going on after hours, or in settings where it is not necessarily being coded or reported," says Hurst.

This makes it difficult to gauge the true impact of virtual care in plugging gaps in primary healthcare delivery across the country.

Picture: Green Cross virtual care clinical lead Kim Hurst

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