Coronavirus: Infection fears trigger push for GP Skype calls
GPs may be allowed to claim for Skype consultations with patients suspected of having coronavirus in bid to stop spread.
GPs would be allowed to claim for Skype consultations with patients suspected of having coronavirus, minimising the risk of spreading the disease, under a proposal backed by state health ministers.
It comes as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Australia jumped to 25 on Saturday and the World Heath Organisation raised the risk of the spread of the disease to “very high”.
A 63-year-old woman who recently returned from Iran is in isolation at the Gold Coast University Hospital, while a 79-year-old west Australian woman has tested positive after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan.
According to the Australian health department there are 84,117 cases world wide and 2872 reported deaths.
States pushed for changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule during a meeting of ministers on Friday, with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners also calling for video consultations to be bulk-billed. Currently, telehealth consultations can only be billed to Medicare when a patient is in a remote area. The changes would allow GPs to help care for those isolated at home over fears they may have been infected.
“There’s an obvious benefit: where we can keep people in their home and out of clinics we should,” Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said.
“We asked the commonwealth to consider allowing doctors to effectively bulk-bill to do those consults. That’s something the commonwealth said they were considering.”
It comes as West Australian authorities on Friday confirmed a second person in the state had been diagnosed with coronavirus, bringing the national total to 24.
The woman and her husband were passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. Her husband tested positive soon after arriving in Darwin last week, and he has been receiving treatment in Perth’s Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. His wife was under quarantine in the same hospital and has now also tested positive.
Following Friday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt praised the states for their preparedness in dealing with a potential pandemic. The virus has now spread to 49 countries.
“My judgment coming out of the meeting with the states and territories today is that we were better prepared, they were more advanced than I had previously known,” Mr Hunt said.
“Their work in preparing the hospitals, preparing the medical workforce, is not just exemplary but literally world leading.”
He singled out Queensland as being the most prepared state in setting up “fever clinics”, which hospitals across the country plan to use as triage zones for suspected coronavirus patients. The clinics will mean patients bypass the emergency department, minimising the risk of spreading the virus. About a dozen Queensland hospitals have fever clinics set up.
“They’re in all our major hospitals,” Dr Miles said. “They’re essentially a separate entry point and space for patients presenting with respiratory illnesses where the first round of triage and assessment is determining whether they potentially have the coronavirus.
“That fast-tracks the treatment of those suspected of having coronavirus, but it also keeps them out of the general emergency department, allowing it to continue to flow as well as reducing the risk of infection.”
State governments are also preparing plans to cope with a situation where intensive care units in public hospitals are full. They are considering buying space in private hospitals with ICU capacity. If public hospitals are forced to rely on private hospitals for overflow ICU capacity and elective surgery, the bill to state governments would be large. “We don’t know how much but we do know that we’ll need to have a conversation with the commonwealth,” Dr Miles said.
Mr Hunt also said the commonwealth would lead work in making sure the nation’s medical stockpile was adequate.
Additional reporting: Paul Garvey
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