There’s little doubt that the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED) has been one of the most unexpected but impressive outcomes from the COVID pandemic, having grown from a small offering for the local catchment from Northern Hospital in November 2020 to a statewide implementation in 2022 and now racking up over 100,000 consultations to date.

It is being used by Ambulance Victoria, including for residential aged care, and late last year a partner service was launched to give GPs virtual access to Northern Health specialists. This Medical Community Virtual Consult (MCVC) service is now growing at pace and it too has gone statewide, allowing GPs to book in for a case conference with a specialist for complex patients. It offers paediatrics, dermatology and endocrinology among others, all through commonly used technology like Healthdirect Video Call and a repurposed appointment booking system.

The 20-minute consults are quickly booked out so Northern Health is holding a holding a specialist speed consulting session on June 3 for GPs to network and discuss complex cases with hospital-based specialists face to face.

GPs can also book an appointment with a geriatrician while they are visiting a patient in residential aged care, helped by the grants and assistance that the Primary Health Networks have provided to upskill RACFs and staff with telehealth technology and training. Nurses and carers at the facilities also have access to VVED itself whenever they need it, although that is usually when an ambulance has attended.

We learned this week that Queensland is providing remote consultation services for rural and regional GPs with Mater Health specialists through the Queensland eConsultant Partnership Program. Rather than a virtual consult, this takes the form of an asynchronous, secure-messaging based system that was first developed in Canada and has been adapted for the Queensland health system. The hope is that this service may also roll out statewide, although it may face problems with lack of interoperability – nothing new to digital health.

All states and territories are moving at pace with hospital-based virtual care projects but involving GPs is surely the way of the future. Both the MCVC and the eConsultant services are helped immeasurably by the fact GPs can bill for them – either as a multidisciplinary case conference or as an outpatient referral. We expect that with the government’s plans for MyMedicare, its voluntary patient enrolment (VPE) program, which received some extra funding in the recent federal budget and which is due to kick off in the second half of the year.

MyMedicare is being extended to aged care through a new General Practice in Aged Care Incentive (GPACI) involving $112 million over four years, along with $98.9 million over four years to connect frequent hospital users to a general practice to receive comprehensive, multidisciplinary care in the community. The telehealth items for longer C and D consults are being restored for GPs and it would make sense that funding will be able to be used for virtual case conferencing to provide the sort of GP-led wraparound care that the government is so fond of.

Virtual care really has come of age in a hurry. That brings us to our poll question for the week:

Will GPs see value in virtual or asynchronous consults with specialists?

Vote here and leave your comments below.

Last week we asked: Is a State Health Operations Centre a good model for other jurisdictions? Most said yes: 67 per cent were in favour, 33 per cent were against.

We also asked: If yes, why? If not, where else should the money be spent? Here’s what you said.