GP Assist (Tasmania) is a new service providing after hours workforce support to rural General Practitioners (GPs) throughout the State of Tasmania. The objective of GP Assist is to enhance rural GP workforce recruitment and retention through alleviating the burden of after hours demands upon an overstretched rural GP workforce. The simultaneous goal of the service is to ensure high quality after hours care to patients by providing a prompt, professional and guaranteed response to after hours calls from patients seeking medical care or advice. GP Assist delivers services using applied ICT from a purpose-built 4-seat nurse triage centre in Hobart. GP Assist is funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Health and Ageing.


Overview
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General Practitioners have an obligation to provide care for their patients 24 hours a day 7 days a week. For rural GPs this often means being constantly on call – disrupting both family and professional life. This impact on lifestyle is increasingly a factor in discouraging GPs from working in rural communities.

GP Assist is designed to help rural GPs care for their patients after hours, improving their lifestyle and encouraging them to stay in the country towns, and for other doctors to join them.

GP Assist consists of a small team of doctors and registered nurses (RNs), working together. The RNs work from a dedicated 4-seat triage call centre and are supported by ICT. After hours calls made by patients to rural General Practices are diverted to GP Assist, RNs provide advice and arrange the most appropriate medical care for them. In the majority of cases this can be achieved without disturbing the rural GP.

GP Assist does not replace the need for local doctors but reduces their workload significantly by 'filtering out' those calls which do not need immediate face-to-face care by the local GP. At the same time, this service guarantees patients a prompt, professional response to their health care needs throughout the entire after hours period.

By reducing rural GPs’ after hours calls by over 80%, GP Assist has proved to be a highly effective and popular service with GPs. It is also very popular with patients because of the prompt and professional response.

This model of cooperation, comprising a centralised professional RN triage operation, doctor telephone advice and the full integration with local GP care, is unique in Australia.

HOW GP ASSIST WORKS
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The use of GP Assist by GPs is optional however when they want to use it they divert their patients’ calls to the GP Assist 1300 telephone number.

All calls are answered promptly by an RN. Calls regarding potentially life-threatening problems are immediately transferred to the Ambulance Service by a 3-way ‘conference call’. Otherwise, assisted by decision-support software (TeleguidesTM), the RNs assesses the patient, and recommends an appropriate level of care.

If the RN determines that a patient needs to see a doctor before the practices next opening time the RN sends the call to the GP Assist 'triage doctor'. The triage doctor is alerted by an SMS message and continues the consultation with the patient whilst accessing and adding to the clinical record via a secure virtual private network (VPN). This technology allows doctors to work with GP Assist in the triage role from any location, including mobile.

The triage doctor provides advice on the best course of action for the patient's problem; this may include home care, organising an allied health service, arranging a prescription, referring to hospital or, where appropriate, notifying the local GP. Consequently, the local rural GP is only disturbed by a 'triage doctor' and then only when the patient has been fully-assessed by him.

'Live' practice information about local GPs, their on-call rosters, individual practice arrangements and other local health care information is available to triage RNs and doctors via a dedicated and secure web-enabled database. Other, approved, web-sites are accessible via a service intranet.

Each patient 'encounter' is fully documented and a summary report is forwarded to the patient's usual GP before the next working day provided the patient consents.

Please view our online Brochure for more detailed information – Accessible from the Home page