Millicent Spencer
Staff at the Victorian Virtual ED (VVED) have celebrated reaching a milestone number of consultations.
Since opening in October 2020 the VVED has seen over 85,000 patients across the state.
Premier Daniel Andrews visited the VVED on Tuesday, March 10 and said he was grateful to the staff at Northern Hospital for pioneering an innovative model of care.
“It is just an outstanding success [and] the feedback is universally positive,” he said.
Mr Andrews said the VVED is filling a gap of bulk billing services which are lacking across the state.
“It’s never been harder to find a bulk billing doctor particularly after hours,” he said.
“Medicare is broken and it needs to be fixed.”
The VVED saw a record number of patients over the festive period, seeing 640 patients on Boxing Day alone.
VVED director Dr Loren Sher said the the service has been a blessing, allowing many patients to remain at home and out of busy EDs.
“Only about 20 per cent of patients get advised to attend a hospital on any given day,” she said.
Mr Andrews said there was an urgent need to fix “systems that are broken”.
“What I am calling for is that we make this a key priority, the priority, for national cabinet,” he said.
“There is something fundamentally wrong when state government’s have to step in and set up primary care clinics and virtual emergency department’s to deal with big problems in Medicare.
“We cant pretend to be our government and the federal government, we need a partner.”
