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RDN Outreach in national innovation spotlight
26th February 2024
The Australian Digital Health Agency has cast a national spotlight on RDN’s innovative approaches to digital health in the National Digital Health Strategy 2023-2028, a five-year plan that sets the vision and pathway for Australia’s digital health future. Among six “innovation spotlights” featured, RDN was recognised for increasing access to multidisciplinary healthcare through digitally enhanced Outreach services; and Rural Health Pro was singled out for building rural health workforce capability.
The Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Health and Aged Care noted in his foreword that the Strategy had been developed in consultation with State and Territory Governments, consumers, healthcare professionals and the software industry and would “strengthen Medicare and enable our health system to serve the needs of Australians today and into the future.”
The following is an excerpt from the Strategy document, highlighting the innovative work of the RDN Outreach program.
INNOVATION SPOTLIGHT: Rural Doctors Network – increasing access to multidisciplinary healthcare through digitally enhanced outreach services
People living in rural and remote communities experience poorer health outcomes and have reduced access to health services compared with urban populations. In response, Rural Doctors Network (RDN) works to create and sustain access to quality multidisciplinary healthcare for all Australians, no matter where they live, using digital health technology to augment and scale its services.
The Outreach Program, funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, is part of RDN’s Health Access initiative that increases rural and Aboriginal communities’ access to locally designed and managed multidisciplinary health services. The program overcomes access barriers relating to distance, delay, affordability and cultural safety to deliver more than 1,000 services to rural and Aboriginal communities in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. These services are delivered by medical specialists, allied health practitioners, nurses and Aboriginal health practitioners both face-to-face and virtually, as well as using hybrid delivery methods. The outreach models are sustainable and respond to locally identified health priorities.
Digitally augmented outreach services – fully virtual clinics and alternating face-to-face/virtual care – often involve local health practitioners, who provide in-person patient support in clinical rooms, and medical specialists providing virtual consultations. These models support the patient–clinician therapeutic relationship and increase access through timely follow-up care. RDN trialled a general practitioner telehealth model at rural aged care facilities that reduced unnecessary and costly hospital transfers for many frail patients. This has now been scaled through changes to Medicare GP telehealth items.
Digital health also supports rural service resilience and workforce skills. Most outreach services were sustained during COVID-19 when rural and Aboriginal communities worked to reduce community transmission. More than 50% of rural health practitioners reported using virtual models to maintain community access between July 2020 and June 2021 when more than 200,000 occasions of service were accessed by patients, of whom 62% identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. Multidisciplinary outreach clinics also facilitate skills and knowledge transfer between health professionals, with 15% of services routinely reporting upskilling activity.
Patients have reported high rates of satisfaction when accessing services through the Outreach Program and the provision of virtual care alongside in-person care correlates with higher health practitioner satisfaction. RDN continues to explore ways to use digital health technology to support rural community access to healthcare and invest in rural workforce capability.
Read the full National Digital Strategy here.
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