It’s time we fixed our funding streams for Telehealth services in Australia.

We need to do this, so that health care providers can scale up their telehealth services with certainty.

We know that Telehealth offers some great patient benefits, as well as other efficiencies both in terms of cost savings and even quality measures like infection control - for the right patients, and conditions, it should be a no-brainer. 

But there are several funding models for the Australian health system, all which have different rules: some innovative telehealth services might not be directly funded at all and there are complex guidelines relating to distance and ‘urbanity’ for Medicare-based reimbursement. This makes it very hard for services and clinicians to make informed, financially sustainable decisions about where and how to use this model of service delivery.

We’re still struggling with uptake in a Australia - a country where distance can create big costs and inequalities in access to health care. These sorts of initiatives are what we should be using the NBN for. 

There are a few things we can do better to support Telehealth like cross-service scheduling, and change management to embed telehealth as part of ‘business as usual’. But I think one of the first steps we need to make (if we’re serious about embedding this technology in the health sector) is to get the right funding arrangements and incentives in place.

What do you think? Here's just one news article on the topic: