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Message from the CEO: We were pleased to have the opportunity to make a submission to the Medical Board of Australia as it is reviewing its guidance documents on technology-based consultations published over a decade ago. The revision of the MBA guidelines is a welcome opportunity to take a bigger leap forward and position virtual care more broadly in the community, where it has been well received particularly during the pandemic.
I’d like to give a special shout out to the Fellows and Members who contributed their views - many thanks for taking the time to have your say.
In our submission, we recommend that the MBA, in its review of the guidelines, goes beyond the focus on consultations, which are the only form of healthcare activity in Australia that currently receives financial support under the Medicare Benefits Scheme, and start considering virtual care including telehealth as a fundamental principle. Other healthcare activities can be provided remotely and very successfully such as obtaining second opinions, shared care, and monitoring of a patient’s health status using technology.
As we saw during the pandemic, virtual care, in many circumstances, is perfectly capable of providing the high quality level of care and outcomes without the supplemental need of in-person presence.
We encourage the MBA to focus on updating the guidelines for practitioners, with a focus to ultimately make telehealth and virtual care more accessible. This review is a welcome indicator that the health sector is maturing in its approach to the digital enablement of high quality healthcare.
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