TELEHEALTH

Telehealth, in general, is health care provided to you over a video or phone call. It’s a great way to access occupational therapy services for a number of reasons:

1. Not only does it enable you to have increased choice in who you choose to be your provider,  but if you live in a regional or rural area of the country, it removes barriers such as finding a therapist who can travel the distance to your home.

2. Whether or not you live in a regional or rural area, if you are looking to save money on travel costs for a home visit, this can reduce hours used for travel and increase time available for therapy supports.

3. Some people enjoy not having the sometimes confronting or uncomfortable experience of inviting a stranger into their home.

4. Provided you have reliable and fast internet, you don’t have to leave your home.

It is not without it’s challenges, and there are some inherent limitations that don’t match the benefits of being seen in person, but we are prepared to work with you to navigate these barriers if you are able to meet our Telehealth pre-requisites.

Selecting Telehealth or Hybrid Home Visit and Telehealth in our Referral form will guide you through these requirements.

Commencing completion of the Referral form and moving through the stages will not send us your information until you complete the final acknowledgement at the end.

Selecting Telehealth or Hybrid Home Visit and Telehealth in our Referral form will guide you through the pre-requisites. Commencing completion of the Referral form and moving through the stages will not send us your information until you complete the final acknowledgement at the end.

Below is a bit of a blurb about what the check list of questions covers.

You must be able to do Video calls, otherwise referred to as Video Conferencing and have someone available to help you if assistance is necessary to set up calls and remain on hand to maintain any troubleshooting that may be necessary throughout the appointment.

This also means ensuring that you not only have a device that has a good quality camera on it (we need to be able to see you), but that you also have reliable internet via Wi-Fi or Mobile phone data.

This is because, as well as the general guidelines provided by the legislative bodies that state video is preferred over phone call for Telehealth, upon careful consideration, although we do our best to accommodate all needs, we have strict professional standards to maintain and have therefore determined that as Occupational Therapy relies heavily on observation for assessments it is essential to be able to use our services for Telehealth.

Observation includes things like seeing a person interact in their environment while performing Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) or for communication, to enable us to provide evidence based and reliable recommendations.

You will therefore find that as we move through the process, so that we can complete our clinical assessment, we will need you to show us various areas of your home and/or the environment. This may be areas such as your kitchen, bathroom, entrances, outdoor areas etc, so that we can see how you are functioning in these areas and provide an in depth assessment, that will guide our evidence based practice.

Phone calls will be used as back-up to trouble-shoot if a Video call drops out, or under previously agreed circumstances where it is determined we can safely collaborate without the need to conduct a visual assessment. However, please bear this in mind when considering our Telehealth services as Video is an essential requirement.

The world of Cyberspace is never guaranteed to be 100% reliable or secure. It is therefore necessary for you to consider the risks, as although we do our best to control them with our sourcing and use of secure platforms, including adherence to our policies and procedures designed to protect both of our security risks, there may be risks that are out of our control, such as:

• Unauthorised access or call interruption.

• Technical issues, that may impact the quality of our call.

• Privacy breach due to where you are conducting the call and risk of being overheard.

• Your ability to comply with our terms and conditions of using the Telehealth service, as stated in this document and accepted via your informed consent in our Service Agreement.

In accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act), the Privacy Amendment Act 2012, and Health Records Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act), we will only collect information necessary for the delivery of services.

This information is supported in conjunction with our Privacy and Information Management Policy and Procedure.