A rural doctor's telehealth training program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: In Australia, remote consultations have been used as an adjunct to traditional healthcare delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic using telephone and video techniques with an increase in the use of telephone consultations, and to a lesser extent video consultations, for management of patient conditions, assessment, treatment, monitoring and diagnosis.

Methods: To establish the needs of rural doctors for training in the provision of remote consultations, an online survey of members of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine was undertaken. Subsequently an online scenario-based training program was designed to improve the competencies of members in providing these consultations.

Transitioning a home telehealth project into a sustainable, large-scale service: a qualitative study.

Background: This study was a component of the Flinders Telehealth in the Home project, which tested adding home telehealth to existing rehabilitation, palliative care and geriatric outreach services. Due to the known difficulty of transitioning telehealth projects services, a qualitative study was conducted to produce a preferred implementation approach for sustainable and large-scale operations, and a process model that offers practical advice for achieving this goal.

Methods: Initially, semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior clinicians, health service managers and policy makers, and a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken to identify the range of options for ongoing operations, plus the factors affecting sustainability.