NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Green Cross Health has significantly expanded its virtual care offerings, providing a lifeline to struggling medical practices across New Zealand.

Green Cross virtual care clinical lead Kim Hurst says telehealth platform the Doctors Online is delivering more than 300 telehealth consults per week across four practices.

The service was launched as a casual patient telehealth platform, but has developed into a regular service that fills gaps in general practices that have no permanent GPs and rely on scarce locum doctors.

Green Cross has an ownership interest in 66 general practices across the country and Hurst says the need for innovative care delivery models has become increasingly apparent over recent years, particularly among rural and remote practices.

"We noticed there were multiple practices starting to pop up with critical manpower issues, and they were all, including my own, struggling to recruit in-house to the practice," she says. 

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