Improving Patient Outcomes Using Video Appointments

Southern Health have worked closely with Visionable to develop a Virtual Consultation platform. Southern Health use Visionable software primarily for patient consultations, which has seen a huge increase in usage since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Visionable has provided a safe and secure method of delivering clinical care to the patient in the safety of their home and the following Southern Health services have adopted the use of video appointments: Children’s Services – Health Visiting and School Nursing, italk, the Primary Care Psychology Service, Continence Service, Physio and Perinatal Services.

Southern Health recognised that they needed a cultural shift to deliver patient care differently. Video appointments have enabled continuity of care during the crisis. In the week of 11/03/20 total calls were 166. The next week this was 822 and the week after, 1288 – a daily average of 191 calls. This trend continued with a daily average by mid-August of 157 calls exceeding project targets by 35%. Working with clinical services Southern Health identified the opportunity to rapidly increase availability, ensuring that 50% of lost capacity through COVID could be re-purposed to ensure the most critical cases were being cared for.