Virtual care

Virtual care is any interaction between a patient and clinician, or between clinicians, occurring remotely with the use of information technologies.

Virtual Care is an important component in the planning and delivery of health care services now and into the future. NSW Health released the NSW Virtual Care Strategy 2021-2026: Connecting patients to care. The Strategy outlines the steps NSW Health will take to further integrate virtual care as a safe, effective, accessible option for healthcare delivery in NSW.

Successful virtual care service provision is dependent upon ensuring systems for governing and improving quality and safety are in place.

As system lead for quality and safety, Clinical Excellence Commission is the lead agency on two goals within the implementation plan for this strategy:

  • Embed virtual care into clinical governance frameworks: provide an over-arching review and focus on safety and quality of care in virtual settings
  • Facilitate safety intelligence for virtual care: integrate use of safety intelligence data into safety systems improvement of virtual care as part of robust clinical governance

The Clinical Excellence Commission will work with key stakeholders such as the Agency for Clinical Innovation (ACI), eHealth, the Health Education Training Institute (HETI) and our LHD/SHN partners to deliver these and other goals.

The Clinical Excellence Commission has developed Embedding Virtual Care in Safety and Quality Frameworks to ensure patient safety and clinical quality is maintained when delivering health care via a virtual care modality. Complementing this document is An Operational Guide to Applying Embedding Virtual Care in Safety and Quality Frameworks.