In a recent interview WA Primary Health Alliance spoke with Albany Medical Centre’s Dr Mark Victor to discuss the capabilities of the new telehealth carts.
Dr Victor has patients at Juniper Korumup, one of 42 regional residential aged care homes (RACHs) with a telehealth cart, looking to further incorporate telehealth to enhance primary care for residents.
The telehealth carts are equipped with cutting edge technology that enable clinicians on the receiving end of a video call to interact with what they can see on screen. This includes zooming into lesions or wounds, and receiving live auscultations, blood pressure and pulse readings. When speaking to its benefits, Dr Victor declared the telehealth cart were an invaluable aid.
In addition, Dr Victor commented that the telehealth carts help reduce travel time and treatment delays for residents.
“As it stands at the moment in GP land where we are busy with our practice during the course of the day, we might get a call from the nursing home where a nurse needs guidance and the patient might be quite ill. Under ordinary circumstances it might take 4 or 5 hours to get to the nursing home because we have to wait for the day to finish but if we can utilise the machine [telehealth cart], which I am sure we will, then you’ve got your patients virtually with you and you can cut out the time it takes from when the nurse has alerted you up to the time you get to see the patient.”
Dr Victor also affirmed that better access to his patients during the day and after hours through this virtual care technology will help residential nursing staff avoid unnecessary hospital transfers and keep residents in their homes.
For more information or support with telehealth and virtual care, please email practiceassist@wapha.org.au