While grey nomads are travelling out to remote areas of Australia more than ever, many older travellers are still understandably anxious about the relative scarcity of health services in the Outback.
This problem is increasingly being addressed however by the introduction of ‘self-service’ telehealth clinics in small communities.
The latest to open will be in the tiny South Australian town of Innamincka which sits alongside the Cooper Creek more than 800 kilometres north-east of Adelaide on the Queensland border. While the settlement has a population of just 12 people, it attracts more than 50,000 visitors each year, many of them grey nomads.
The clinic will be run by the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) and will be serviced by doctors and nurses who will fly in for the day from Broken Hill, in western New South Wales. On days where the clinic is unstaffed, patients will have access to a telehealth service where they can be seen remotely by a doctor.
RFDS health service development manager Jenny Beach told the ABC that it would allow a patient to get a full set of observations done, even when there was no nurse in town.
“The doctor will be able to have a look … basically be able to do a much better assessment,” she said. “The doctor will be able to say ‘open drawer number two and take out the little piece of black plastic, and pop that in your ear’ and they can operate that from where they are.”
She said the decision would be made then about whether someone was okay, whether they could be supplied with some medication from the medical chest, or whether they needed the plane to pick them up.
Ms Beach said the self-service healthcare model was being rolled out in a series of regional locations it could transform health delivery in remote areas.
The ABC reports that the South Australian Government has funded about half of the $800,000 clinic through the state’s Regional Growth Fund.
Good on ya RFDS…!