Australians have seen a huge increase in telehealth consults since the outbreak of COVID-19 after University of Queensland researchers crunched the numbers from Medicare.
In total, 1.1 million telehealth consultations were delivered in March with more than 56,000 mental health services given by phone or video conference.
The launch of Australia’s first webpage reporting Medicare’s telehealth activity provides information on how people use Medicare funded telehealth appointments to access general practice, allied health, psychiatry and nursing consults.
UQ Centre for Online Health Director Professor Anthony Smith said researchers have turned raw Medicare data into easy-to-understand information for busy health professionals, the general public, government, health service researchers and health insurance agencies.
