Relationship with General Practice essential to Homecare Medical’s success
Homecare Medical CEO Andrew Slater.
In just 15 weeks, Homecare Medical went from having an Auckland-based team of 30 to providing an integrated national telehealth service, with more than 300 staff and four contact centres across the country. In the last year, it has given free advice 24/7 to more than half a million Kiwis.
The organisation, which is a partnership between Pegasus Health and ProCare, was selected in June last year by the Ministry of Health to provide an enhanced, integrated national telehealth service. It includes Healthline; Quitline; advice about poisons and immunisation; and helplines for alcohol and drugs, depression and gambling support.
According to the organisation’s CEO Andrew Slater, Homecare Medical’s backbone is General Practice. “As well as providing support to General Practice after hours, Homecare Medical services direct people to enrol with a GP or connect with their existing GP for their ongoing care,” Andrew says.
“Our ambition is to ‘virtually support kiwis to stay well and connect them seamlessly with care when they need it’. A person’s General Practice is always recommended as the very best place to go for long term health care.”
Andrew says the timeframe for getting the new integrated service up and running was “incredibly tight”. “In that time, we had to employ 300 people, deliver 7,000 hours of training, establish the four contact centres, embed a national directory of 3,500+ health services, and provide a new smoking cessation programme to support 40,000 New Zealanders in the next 12 months.”
Nursing and mental health and addictions health professionals are based in the contact centres in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, while more than 80 registered nurses work from home, from Kaitaia to Bluff. Thirty staff are based in Christchurch at 222 Bealey Ave.
The way the organisation has been reconfigured means that whatever part of the service is contacted, callers will ideally receive the right advice from the right person at the right time – “every door into the service is the right door,” Andrew says.
Staff provide 24/7 triage and advice on a range of topics such as medical emergencies, quitting smoking, dealing with poisons, alcohol and drug addiction, immunisation, depression and gambling harm. They also handle the after-hours telephone calls for 600 General Practices across New Zealand.
“Having Pegasus Health and ProCare as our parent organisations has been critical to our success,” Andrew says. “Their reputation and support have got us to where we are today. The focus has been on working together, something that I know has long been part of Pegasus’ DNA and is part of ours – working pokohiwi ki pokohiwi, shoulder to shoulder.”
“Both organisations should be immensely proud of what’s been achieved and it’s great to be able to deliver primary care centric services through a range of different tools from phone calls to text messages and web chat.”
Andrew says Homecare Medical has taken ownership of the virtual health care space in New Zealand. “The national telehealth service has put us at the forefront of the conversation and thought leadership around where we go as a health system.”
“Over the next 12 months, the focus for us will be on equity of access across New Zealand and how we can take what we’ve built and use it to solve other problems in the health sector. Conversations are also underway about how we can support District Health Boards and primary care in strengthening their mental health services.”