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Provision of critical care in rural areas is challenging due to geographic distance, smaller facilities, generalist skill mix and population characteristics. Internationally, the amalgamation telemedicine and retrieval medicine services are developing to overcome these challenges. Virtual emergency clinical advisory and transfer service vCare is one of these novel services based in New South Wales, Australia. We aim to describe patient encounters with vCare from call initiation at the referring site to definitive care at the accepting site.
Data were extracted from electronic medical records and included remoteness of sites, presenting complaint, triage category, camera use, patient characteristics, transfer information, escalation of therapeutic intervention and outcomes. Data were summarised using cross tabulation. Clinicians mainly referred to vCare for trauma A referral to vCare led to an escalation of invasive intervention, skill, and resources for patient care.
Overall, Of those, Of high-urgency referrals, Admissions were for physician The survival rate was Issues were identified including low utilisation of equipment, heavy reliance on regional sites and high rates of secondary transfer.
However, these models are addressing a key gap in the health workforce and supporting rural and remote communities to receive care. Keywords: Emergency care, Retrieval medicine, Rural and remote healthcare, Telehealth, Transfer medicine, Virtual medicine. Sparsely populated land areas dominate most countries of the globe [ 1 ]. In these areas, providing routine and specialised healthcare services is an ongoing challenge [ 1 β 7 ].
