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One way Northern Health, a major provider in Melbourne’s north, is creating value for its patients and community, is by enabling its clinicians to offer virtual options.
THE PROBLEM
It began during the pandemic. As with the rest of the industry, the organisation too had to accelerate its digital transformation by embracing digital tools for delivering remote care. However, they had to make do with little technologies available to them back then. “Systems were clunky, there was little or limited integration of our systems and poor interoperability,” recalled Dr Katharine See, chief health outcomes officer and director of Respiratory Medicine at Northern Health.
Once the dust settled, they realised that they could never go back to the way things were before. Northern Health is now receiving over 114,000 admissions each year; its emergency department alone treats over 111,000 patients annually with the auxiliary Victorian Virtual Emergency Department now attending to calls from more than 103,000 patients.