The federal Department of Health and Ageing has poured an additional $216.3 million to fund its telehealth consultations scheme until 2015, with expectations around ten per cent of the nation’s practitioner workforce would take part in the scheme within five years.
The Northern Territory has allocated $6.6 million toward telehealth services at 17 remote towns in the territory, marking its first financial contribution since the initiative was announced a year ago.
The Federal Government must focus on providing suitable broadband connectivity and technical capability to general practitioners and other healthcare providers in order to ensure the success of telehealth services in rural Australia, health professionals have warned.
Telehealth video conferencing and live telemetrics equipment for trauma and critical will be extended to all 16 regional Victorian hospitals administered under the Loddon Mallee Rural Health Alliance following a successful, 20-month trial across four of the units.
Two of the first mainland release sites under the National Broadband Network (NBN) will receive telehealth monitoring units in coming months, as part of a $4 million trial conducted by NSW Health.
Establishing a clear deployment model and providing financial incentives for health care providers are some of the key issues to be resolved if telehealth services are to be successfully rolled out across Australia, according to the Department of Health and Ageing.
The Australian government has announced that from 1 July 2011 patients in remote, regional and outer metropolitan areas will receive greater access to specialists through new investments in telehealth consultations via the internet.