Moving beyond telehealth: adapting enhanced clinical processes with technology to improve access, equity, efficiency and population health in rural and remote Australia

Opportunity

Implement and evaluate new telehealth models of care in regional Western Australia with a focus on consumer engagement, patient and provider satisfaction and patient outcomes.

Project objective

This project has two core phases. The first will identify key health areas where telehealth and outreach can be better used to improve patient and provider satisfaction and patient outcomes. The second will implement and evaluate new models of care identified and developed from Phase 1.

In advance of the pandemic the WA State Government sustainable health review set a target of 63% of outpatient appointments to be delivered by telehealth. While pre COVID this may have seemed ambitious, the pandemic is changing behaviours and approaches to the use of technology.

This provides the project team with an opportunity to explore how we can use digital technology to improve the efficiency of healthcare service delivery without compromising privacy, quality and/or safety.