>Further to below: > >1) It's already happening in Tassie - >http://www.gpat.com.au
>John Mac > >>1) The rural hospital should use _electronic health records_ which >>can be accessed remotely using _virtual private networking_ - >>rural hospitals would need this to be set up by IT techies, and >>nursing and medical staff would need some training to adapt >>to the new computerised medical record system. I'd like to clarify, from first-hand experience using the Tassie system, although it worked very well, the local rural hospital does not have electronic health records which were remotely used (and I doubt seriously the records are remotely electronically accessible at all). The system worked as follows: + Rang dear ole mum's GP on a Saturday morning, knowing full well he was out of town and surgery not open on Saturdays anyway. + Got the afterhours triage nurse (probably the one in Hobart who is using the triage software) who took basics of name, contact number and symptoms + She said a GP would be ringing back ASAP + A GP rang back within 10 minutes + Listened to my rundown of symptoms (and recent hx of THR Left side with stats still not at 100% on discharge from hosp 5 days earlier) and then located closest 'live' GP for us to attend (could have called ambo if required) + We drove 15 mins to 'live' GP who then admitted dear ole mum into local rural hospital with pneumonia (15 minute drive back the way we came) I don't know that in this case the phone GP's access to my mum's ehr remotely would have assisted that much but it wouldn't have hurt and there are plenty of cases where patients and their families may be incapable of providing important information. I would hope that patient ehr integration is the next step in the Tasmanian service but can't be sure as the various hospitals seem to face the same disparity of software in use that other Aussie health services face. So, I guess that means multiple VPNs from Hobart if following John Mac's scenario? >>2) There would need to be a "panel" of suitably trained/experienced >>doctors to be remotely on-call for these smaller rural hospitals. >>Theoretically it would be possible for all rural hospitals throughout >>Australia to be covered from 10pm to 8am by remote on-call doctors >>working shifts in W.A. from 8pm to 2am and then an eastern state >>from 4am to 10am. I was quite satisfied talking to a Triage Nurse first; I suppose her role was to 'triage' most urgent-sounding for the AH GPs to contact in priority. I have a level of confidence that if I had emphasised more urgency and more severe symptoms, she would have handed me straight over to first available GP without waiting to phone back. Cheerio, Jan _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
