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FEATURE ARTICLE
Telehealth Special: Thriving in a Telehealth Environment Dr Mark Fulcher, Sport and Exercise Physician, MBchB, MMedSci, FACSEP
Dr Mark Fulcher is a Sport and Exercise physician based at Axis Sports Medicine in Auckland. Mark has been working via tele-health over the past year and has recently created and implemented a system for the Axis team to continue to operate through the lockdown imposed by the COVID-19 virus. He has recently presented to the ACSEP medical college on the subject of telehealth. In this short piece Mark will highlight some simple and practical suggestions about how to implement a tele-health system at your practice, what administrative challenges this may present and provide tips on how to conduct a high-quality tele-health consult.
How are you coping working in an environment when you are unable to physically touch your patient? The last few weeks have been truly remarkable. The word ‘unprecedented’ has been used widely; however, it is hard for me to find a better adjective. The COVID-19 enforced lockdown has forced us all to substantially change our practice in a world where many of us are unable to leave our own homes and where organised sport does not exist. At our clinic we have moved to a 100% telehealth solution. The speed at which this has happened would probably not surprise you, as I suspect that most of you will have experienced something similar. In a more normal world, the transition to a new method of consulting would have no doubt involved many meetings, extensive research into available technologies and lengthy discussions about how best to proceed. Despite this lack of ‘process’ and a ridiculously short timeframe, I believe that most of us have developed a solution that largely suits the needs of both our clinicians and patients. The overwhelming feedback that I have received from
both my patients and the clinicians I work with is that this telehealth is a medium that they enjoy and in many cases that they prefer over a face to face meeting. It is generally more convenient for both groups, is generally felt to be effective and limits the need for anyone to leave their ‘bubbles’. It would be wrong to suggest that moving to a new method of consulting has been seamless. This has involved lots of hard work from both our clinical and administration teams as well as being a steep learning curve for all of us. In this article I have tried to summarise some of the things that I have learned over the past 18 months or so that I have been offering telehealth consultations, and some things that our practice has learned (rapidly) over the past few weeks. I would also like to try to offer some advice about how you may be able to optimize your telehealth consultations.
I think the key to succeeding with Telehealth is adopting a positive outlook. There are multiple possible sources of frustration with this type of consultation, particularly when it is almost completely new to you. For example, you CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >>
