A couple of interesting articles have appeared this week.
Telehealth’s ups and downs for mental health care
One hundred and forty-four years after the invention of the telephone, that magical technology has at last been fully, officially integrated into our health system.
It may have taken a global pandemic to get telehealth services covered by Medicare for the whole Australian population, but now that it’s here, experts say it could transform approaches to health care, especially mental health care.
“We should have done it 10 years ago but it’s great we’ve done it now,” Professor Ian Hickie, co-director of Health and Policy and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Sydney, tells TMR. “There is an opportunity here for transformative care.
“There have been many, many barriers we have not been able to overcome with traditional clinic-based services so now we have a real opportunity to make progress. It provides contact and flexibility and opportunities that traditional clinic based or real estate-based services don’t. Connecting with people in their own time in their own place in ways that people often prefer.”
In April 2020, there were 5.8 million telehealth consultations; just over 90 per cent of these were via telephone and 9.3 per cent were via video conference.
Thirty-six per cent of the 12.9 million GP consultations in April were given via telehealth. That amounts to 4.6 million telehealth sessions with GPs, which coincided with a reduction in face-to-face consultations. Before COVID-19, on average there were 10.5 million face-to-face consultations every month. This dropped to 8.3 million in April.
Psychiatrists in Australia have been providing telehealth consultations since 2002. Prior to COVID-19, just 4.5 per cent of consultations were via telehealth. This April that number rose to 26 per cent.
“Patients are clearly making the case for telehealth consultations to become a permanent feature of our health system for both GPs and non-GP specialists,” Dr Tony Bartone, President of the AMA said in a statement.
“Telehealth is the norm in many parts of the world, providing patients with a convenient option to access care where they don’t need a physical examination,” he said.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Impacts of COVID-19 Survey found that between 29 April and 4 May, one in six Australians used a telehealth service and those with a mental health condition were more likely to use a telehealth service than those without.
Experts say telehealth could be used to improve access to mental health care across the country.
“Mental health is particularly amenable to telehealth because it does not require a physical examination,” says Associate Professor Liam Caffery, Director of Telehealth Technology at the Centre for Online Health at the University of Queensland. “There is a lot of evidence of effectiveness of telehealth using video conferencing in a broad range of psychiatric and mental health care services.
“In terms of mental health, some patients find it less confronting and less stigmatising than in-person services, and it allows them greater discretion in accessing services.”
More here:
http://medicalrepublic.com.au/telehealths-ups-and-downs-for-mental-health-care/32124
Second we have this:
An app to shift junior doctors’ mental health
An app being trialled to boost junior doctors’ engagement with their mental health is being rolled out in NSW a month ahead of schedule, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Shift app was developed by the Black Dog Institute at the University of NSW and funded by NSW Health, and had a dedicated “dealing with the pandemic” module added ahead of its early release.
A NSW Health spokesperson said the department recognised the need for extra support for staff during the pandemic, and the Black Dog Institute “kindly agreed to accelerate their plans”.
Shift can be trialled until 4 August, and to date almost 200 junior medical officers (JMOs) employed in NSW – including interns, residents, registrars and junior career medical officers – have anonymously registered to have their symptoms of major depression disorder and general anxiety disorder studied.
Despite thousands of mental health apps being available for download in Australia at any one time, mental health researcher Dr Samineh Sanatkar said Shift was the first that addressed the specific challenges faced by doctors in training.
“An app is an unobtrusive way to offer some initial strategies doctors can try themselves,” said Dr Sanatkar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Black Dog Institute.
“There’s considerable help-seeking stigma and help-seeking concerns that are quite unique to the medical profession, and when you’re a junior doctor any mental health concerns can go along with considerable doubts as to whether you’ve made the right choice in being a doctor, so it’s a particularly stressful and confusing stage of one’s career.”
Users can log their mood, sleep, work-life balance, and physical activity each day.
More here:
http://medicalrepublic.com.au/an-app-to-shift-junior-doctors-mental-health/32407
Mental health support is uniquely supportable via telehealth and many different apps, so it is good to see use being made of these capabilities.
Interesting stuff.
David.
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