The Challenge

There is a chronic shortage of primary health care professions, including GPs, working in the residential aged care sector.  This is contributing to aged care beds left vacant due to the lack of an admitting practitioner; residents lacking any primary health care support as GPs retire or exit service provision to Residental Aged Care Facilities (RACF); residents being sent to hospital emergency departments for treatment, overcrowding already stretched services and causes delays in life saving care for critically ill people.  New models of care using a mix of on-site and telehealth delivered care are emerging, and funding has been provided by government to roll-out telehealth solutions to RACF, but there remains a critical lack of support to train doctors, health care professionals and aged care workers in the effective and efficient use of this technology and almost no consideration of how to engage elderly residents to build confidence in new models of care.