Providers and private insurers to develop ‘patient-focused’ standards

A range of digital service providers and private health insurers have assembled to create a new Australian Telehealth Standards Consortium, tasked with developing a set of national standards for the rapidly growing sector.
 
Announced on Tuesday, the consortium will be convened by Patients Australia, with participating organisations to include Healthdirect, Medibank, HCF, Bupa, nib Group’s Honeysuckle Health, Updoc, Eucalyptus, Healthengine, MedAdvisor, Mosh, Medmate, 13SICK, and Wesfarmers Health.
 
The group says its aim is to co-design new telehealth standards with patients and independent experts to ‘ensure better, safer, virtual care’, with the RACGP a consultation partner in developing the standards.
 
RACGP President Dr Michael Wright said the college’s involvement in the consultation process is to provide insight around quality care and safety, and to ensure telehealth clinics offer a high standard of care.
 
‘The RACGP was approached on this, and we want to make sure the group is working to produce standards that create safe access to high-quality telehealth, that support existing services and do not devalue the role of general practice,’ he told newsGP. 
 
‘While telehealth-only providers are unable to meet accreditation standards for general practice, it is important that we have a framework for ensuring that they are providing the high-quality and safe care our patients deserve and expect.
 
‘We’ve seen concerns raised where telehealth services have not met standards relating to advertising or clinical quality and we’re trying to be constructive to support improved consistency of these services.’
 
According to Patients Australia, the group is working towards the development of a ‘robust accreditation framework that puts patient safety, choice, and continuity and quality of care at the heart of telehealth delivery’.
 
The framework will apply regardless of the provider, service type, or delivery method.
 
Group chair and Patients Australia Digital Health Ambassador Richard Skimin said the group will ‘bring together some of the most trusted names in the healthcare system’ to create the standards.
 
‘This work is about setting the bar for safety and quality and making it easier for patients to know who they can trust,’ he said.
 
The announcement comes less than two months after telehealth provider Eucalyptus, which will sit on the consortium, published its own ‘Telehealth best practice principles for Australian online providers’, aiming to deliver a ‘nationally recognised set of safety and quality guidelines’.
 
This led to concerns at the time, with Chair of the RACGP Expert Committee – Quality Care Professor Mark Morgan saying it is ‘unclear whether an industry provider of telehealth should lead this self-declared national telehealth standards’.
 
Since COVID-19 telehealth items were introduced, GPs have been the largest group of telehealth providers, accounting for six out of every seven telehealth services.
 
According to the MBS Review Advisory Committee’s Telehealth Post-Implementation Review Final Report, there is risk some telehealth appointments do not support integrated, safe and high-quality care.
 
‘Online-only GP business models that offer telehealth services for medical certificates, prescriptions and referrals have been growing,’ the report says.
 
‘These services are marketed as a convenient way to access health care for services such as getting prescriptions and referrals where the outcomes are pre-determined, and patient led.’
 
In 2023, the Medical Board of Australia also released a new set of telehealth guidelines, designed to ‘close the gap that’s sprung up between online prescribing business models and good medical practice’.
 
But as the consortium progresses its standards development, Patients Australia CEO Lisa Robins said telehealth is a ‘care pathway with huge potential’, but that is needs to have the correct foundations.
 
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