The government’s 1800MEDICARE phone line may have clocked one million callers, but it is no threat to regular GP practices, says an RACGP spokesperson.
Health minister Mark Butler says 1800MEDICARE has taken pressure “off overwhelmed hospital emergency departments” in a big way – but it’s no match for general practice.
According to figures made public by Mr Butler’s office today, 1800MEDICARE has logged more than 1,000,000 calls since it commenced operations in January.
Technically, the service is a continuation of the Healthdirect virtual health service, which has been operating 24 hours per day, seven days per week since 2007.
1800MEDICARE includes a website and app. It is also a slight misnomer; patients do not need to be Medicare-eligible to access the 1800MEDICARE service.
“1800MEDICARE has already had a significant impact on state and territory hospitals, with more than 170,000 people diverted from busy emergency departments or from calling Triple Zero,” Mr Butler said.
The numbers
The figures released by his office claimed that one in 10 callers was diverted from presenting at an emergency department or from calling 000, that 10% of callers were referred to an urgent care clinic and that nearly 60,000 callers went on to have a free virtual GP consultation.
The Medical Republic attempted to confirm the department’s methodology in order to verify how it calculated ED avoidance but did not receive an answer before deadline.
Previously, when collecting data on Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s methodology included asking patients directly where they would have gone if the service had not been available.
Even though roughly 45% of those UCC patients indicated that they would have presented to a hospital emergency department, the second interim report on urgent care clinics found that the availability of UCCs only reduced equivalent ED presentations by 10%.
Related
In terms of 1800MEDICARE caller demographics, roughly 20% of calls were from a rural or remote area and one in three calls came on a weekend or public holiday.
NSW accounted for the most calls of any jurisdiction, at 471,000, followed by Victoria at 352,000, WA at 133,000 and SA at 116,000.
Tasmania, Queensland, and the two territories each recorded less than 50,000 calls each.
General practice
Dr Janice Tan, RACGP deputy chair of digital health and innovation, told TMR that the 1800MEDICARE figures had given her assurance that trust remained an important component of healthcare.
“It’s interesting, as a GP really interested in digital health, that people still look for health advice in trusted places,” she said.
“Like, these are huge numbers, right?
“Despite people having more health information at their fingertips more than ever – like Google, or like the AI chatbots – despite all of that, a million of them still pick up the phone to speak to a nurse.”
At the end of the day, she said, people would still use a trusted service when it was easy.
“The RACGP standpoint, and my standpoint as well, is that this complements the existing primary care landscape, and it really still isn’t a substitute for care from a specialist GP who knows you and your history,” Dr Tan said.
“Don’t get me wrong; I do agree that this phone line can give really good advice at 2am. But I think at the end of the day, for continuity of care, a GP is the one that has to put that advice into context and bring that through your longitudinal care journey.”
In light of this, Dr Tan said she supported stronger uptake of My Health Record and interoperability, to ensure that GPs were always kept in the loop.
According to the 1800MEDICARE website, the service “supports continuity of care by enabling information from a 1800MEDICARE virtual GP consultation to be shared to … My Health Record and, with consent, to [the patient’s] regular GP via secure message”.
