CASE STUDY Southern
Patient Janice McDrury in a telehealth consultation with Southern DHB endocrinologist Professor Patrick Manning.
Southern DHB is developing a telehealth platform using Microsoft Teams. Simon Donlevy, SDHB acting general manager medicine and women’s and children’s health says telehealth was available prior to the arrival of Covid-19 and the DHB had promoted its use. “It’s fair to say there was a degree of concern and apprehension about the utility of telehealth and whether patients and medical staff would take to it, because it’s a significant change in practice,” he says. One week in November last year there were just 28 telehealth appointments. In a week in April 2020, more than 2,800 telehealth appointments were conducted and in the last week of August, clinicians did 178 telehealth appointments with patients. “Covid forced us to make those changes. Feedback from patients and clinicians was that it was very well received, so it provided
a very good proof of concept to move forward and promote telehealth more strongly and convince clinicians that telehealth is a viable option,” says Donlevy. Clinicians use two screens for telehealth appointments, one for interacting with the patient and the other showing Health Connect South, the clinical portal for the South Island. The DHB is now establishing a robust video platform for patients to interact with their clinicians using Microsoft Teams. Immediately post-lockdown, enthusiasm for telehealth remained high as evidenced by the DHB calling for interested staff to be on a telehealth steering group and getting 100 responses. Appointment numbers have significantly dropped since then as Southern has focused on building a video platform and many staff reverted to what they know, which is bringing patients into hospital.
However, Donlevy says the enthusiasm is still there and the DHB continues to do significantly more telehealth appointments than the same time last year. Southern is also better prepared if it has to go into Level 4 lockdown again. “We’re concentrating at the moment on the platform, then we will be very quickly looking to ensure we have the ability for patients, who perhaps don’t have the equipment, to still access telehealth,” he says. “We will never be forcing patients to use telehealth as some will never be comfortable and we can’t forget the need for in- person appointments as well.”
hinz .org.nz
TELEHEALTH OCTOBER 2020 : : 4
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