>I'd like to clarify, from first-hand experience using the Tassie system >
The Tassie system started in 1999, and now 83% of Tassie GPs/ practices switch on GPassist after hours. It started in urban Tassie and spread to rural. Patients directly phone GPassist. It uses RN triage first, and the problem can be direced to one of the 16 rostered GPs if needed. 80% of calls are managed by GPassist without requiring further referral to ambulance, hospital or local GP services after hours. GPassist is funded by DoHA, and saved Medicare $1.3m in after hours Medicare claims (which would otherwise have been claimed by after hours locum/deputising services). Tassie's GPassist differs from my proposal which is tailored to rural practice with a small local hospital. The local hospital may be just an aged care facility, but may also have some acute medical beds, and would also be a base for patients to ring or attend after hours to be assessed by the RNdiv1 on duty (so patients would never to ring/contact the rural GP directly). Then this rural hospital RN would ring the "GPassist" GP rather than disturb the local GP. My proposal provides much better support to rural GPs (and is not really applicable to urban or provincial city practice), and would benefit greatly from the rural hospitals using EHRs which would allow the GPassist Dr access by VPN in order to do all the necessary documentation (written history, drug orders, IV orders, pathology and radiology requests, referral correspondence etc.) - all whilst the local rural GP sleeps. John Mac _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
