Northern Health, The Clinician team up to expand Vic virtual ED

Northern Health has partnered with The Clinician, a digital health company, to develop a patient registration and intake platform as part of the statewide expansion of the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED).

Through this service, patients can access non-critical emergency care on their own devices, in the comfort of their own homes. The Clinician's digital health platform (ZEDOC) has been configured to provide the VVED with a streamlined digital patient intake solution and clinical tracking dashboard for timely access to virtual emergency care.

The Clinician has been working with Northern Health to replace the VVED's original intake technology with an improved digital front door solution. Launched in April 2022, individuals seeking non-urgent medical care can now register their details and complete a digital health screening assessment on their own devices. Through ZEDOC's tracking dashboard, VVED staff can access intake results immediately for triage and follow up patients via video call.

Taking less than eight weeks from ideation to implementation, The Clinician team worked with Northern Health to include important features such as a registration form available in 22 different languages as well as SMS verification, automated clinical tracking and a streamlined integration with HealthDirect's telehealth service.

The new solution is being used by more than 200 clinical and clerical staff, who can access it onsite or remotely. The VVED has quadrupled its capacity from 50–60 patients per day since the expansion commenced to over 250 patients per day. The Clinician's ZEDOC solution is helping to manage this increase.

The expansion of the VVED across the entire state of Victoria comes off the back of strong results from the program since its initial launch in 2020. That includes: average wait times of 30 minutes to see a triage nurse via telehealth and 80% discharge rate from the virtual ED with 40% directed to other services and 40% discharged outright.

Tamaryn Hankinson, Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder of The Clinician, said, "Everyone can relate to the challenges of busy, in-person emergency departments, so our team is proud to be supporting Northern Health's VVED and enabling patients to access high-quality care from home. We see this as a great example of how our platform can be flexibly configured to the unique digital health needs of hospitals and healthcare services and look forward to extending our digital transformation work with Northern Health into other exciting areas."

As part of The Clinician's ongoing collaboration with Northern Health, a patient-reported experience measure (PREM) has recently been added, and integrations with existing health information systems are being planned. Northern Health also plans to leverage The Clinician's solution to support ambulatory and other healthcare professional services across the hospital.

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