vCare in Western NSW
vCare is a team of clinicians from Western NSW Local Health District who provide 24/7 virtual support to patients. This includes care coordination, specialist or post specialist care, clinical support/advice, patient transport and virtual monitoring.
vCare Support Services - Western NSW Local Health District
[Scott McLachlan]
G’day. I'm Scott, the Chief Executive of Western New South Wales Local Health District. We've got a stunning region to live and work in, a region that...
[Scott McLachlan]
G’day. I'm Scott, the Chief Executive of Western New South Wales Local Health District. We've got a stunning region to live and work in, a region that's over 280,000 square kilometers the size of England, with over 280,000 people that live and work in this beautiful region.
We now have a network of 38 hospitals and health services. That means that we've got a fantastic opportunity to bring care closer to home for patients. Now, our real challenge in this is to make sure that the quality and standard of care is something we don't compromise on.
[Dr. Shannon Nott]
vCare in Western New South Wales was established to be able to support our rural and remote health professionals in providing a service that ensures that patients, regardless of how unwell or how remote they are, they are going to get the same standard of care that you could get possibly in Royal North Shore in Sydney or Royal Prince Alfred. Ensuring that our patients across this region are going to get optimal outcomes moving forward.
[Amanda Hunter]
We provide a clinical advice and support service to the Western Local Health District hospitals for patients that live in rural areas that don't have specialist care in those towns. We use a range of technology and system enablers to help us have eyes and ears in the room.
[Melissa McGilvray]
We get incredibly unwell patients and people who have been in motor vehicle accidents that need a really high level of care, and we can provide an intensive care level in our emergency department with the support of vCare. So with a doctor on the camera guiding our small team of doctors and nurses, we can run an intensive care in our ED, that transitions onto the helicopter, that transitions into the base hospital ICU, and that person doesn't have a delay in their care just because they've had their accident in the bush.
[Amanda Hunter]
So the vCare team consists of a number of people. We have registered nurses, we have critical care specialists. We've got dispatch coordinators and other support staff. We've also got a non-emergency team. We also work very closely with a number of other specialists across the district and in tertiary facilities that also come into the conference.
[Caren Harrison]
It provides you with that backup support. So I'm very aware that staff are, at times, extremely time poor. They're balancing jobs, trying to prioritize. So it actually allows us to have that offsite backup so someone else is watching what's happening with your patients. It's made a big impact in terms of who's supporting us.
[Amanda Hunter]
So an example of a patient journey through vCare, a gentleman presented to Cobar ED with nine out of 10 central chest pain. They identified that that man was having a severe heart attack. They called the single point of contact for vCare. The nurse prioritized that phone call as a life-threatening referral and invited a number of medical specialists to that phone call, including a cardiologist.
[Dr. Shannon Nott]
They noticed that he was having a significant heart attack, and again, the cardiologist also linked in with vCare to support the teams on the ground.
[Amanda Hunter]
They were able to execute a management plan for that patient and he received clot busting medication, and we moved him with an emergency transport resource to the best location to meet his needs.
[Dr. Shannon Nott]
This gentleman, within seven minutes, seven minutes of presenting to a hospital, received life saving treatment.
[Scott McLachlan]
We have the staff 24/7 available to respond to coordinate some of the best specialists, both in our region and across the whole of the country.
[Amanda Hunter]
If vCare wasn't around in that situation, he possibly could have died, because he was hundreds of kilometers from a specialist.
[Dr. Shannon Nott]
Virtual medicine is not new to us. What we are doing with the virtual care unit is continuing to innovate.
[Scott McLachlan]
Our absolute dream and vision is to help people be healthier and for our communities to thrive. With the cutting edge technology and the new ways of working, this is our time to make a real impact, to connect people to something they can feel confident in and to make an impact in their lives.