Virtual home care

A new digital health project will use virtual care and telemonitoring to support people with chronic disease in low socio-economic areas to reduce pressure on crowded hospitals and GP clinics.

The $1 million project led by Flinders University, ‘safe@home’, aims to provide affordable and effective primary care services to reduce emergency department and hospital admissions, GP clinic waiting times and ambulance ramping.

The project will link SA Health and other agencies including the Northern Adelaide Local Health Network, the Adelaide Primary Health Network, Australian Telehealth Society, Digital Health SA and Integrated Cardiovascular Clinical Network SA.

Professor Robyn Clark, from the Flinders College of Nursing and Health Science says the project will focus on creating a robust primary care framework for people living with high needs, such as heart failure, diabetes, hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

‘Along with providing quality care in the home setting, we aim to improve the every day quality of life for these patients by giving them more regular health checks and access to professional help,’ says Professor Clark.

‘The clinical decisions and actions taken based on information obtained by monitoring will alter patient wellbeing and outcomes.’

The new project will engage and train clinicians across disciplines (doctors, nurses and allied health) in both hospital and primary care to create a new digital health workforce.

Comments included:

‘The doctor’s visit was more than we could have hoped for, she was kind and compassionate as well as being professional and respectful of my husband’s wishes. At each visit it was stipulated that my husband was in control of this process and could stop it at any time if he chose.’

The laws include many safeguards to ensure only eligible people can access VAD and protect vulnerable people from coercion, abuse, and exploitation.

VAD is available for people who meet strict criteria, including having an incurable, advanced and progressive disease, illness, or medical condition expected to cause death within 6 months (or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition), and that is causing suffering to the person that cannot be relieved in a tolerable manner.

The quarterly report can be viewed here and more information about South Australia’s Voluntary Assisted Dying laws can be found here

Home telemonitoring and virtual care will involve consumers in their model of care and give them incentive to increase their self-care and self-monitoring to manage their conditions.

It also will be used to develop a business model using routine Medicare item numbers for primary care and a framework for scaling into routine care, including refinement of the interfaces with the electronic medical records and patients’ clinics.