eConsultant: improving equity and access to specialist care

Principal Advisor: Professor Claire Jackson

Research group: Centre for Health System Reform and Integration

Organisational unit: Mater Research Institute-UQ

With rising demand for outpatient services across Australia, patients are experiencing excessive delays for specialist input, linked with subsequent deterioration in health. eConsultant is an outpatient substitution model which has been implemented internationally and provides a digital, provider-to-provider advice service, giving general practitioners (GPs) remote access to specialist support for patient care within 3-business days. GPs send a Request-for-Advice to the specialist and advise patients to schedule a timely follow-up appointment to discuss the eConsultant advice. Our centre is evaluating the implementation of the eConsultant service to determine if it improves access and is more efficient to deliver than a traditional outpatient service. Using mixed methods, the PhD candidate will:

Use patient case studies to examine how eConsultant improves equity of access for vulnerable patient groups (e.g. remote, frail elderly, in poverty, and CALD).
Analyse service data to understand outpatient avoidance.
Conduct a costing evaluation from a societal perspective to estimate the costs and potential savings associated with the eConsultant service versus traditional outpatient appointments.

With supervisors experienced in health services research and implementation science, this project will result in high-quality research outputs including publications and conference presentations.