Telehealth Service Review

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has begun a comprehensive review of telehealth services.

The Telehealth Service Review is focused on primary care, mental health and addiction, and community telehealth services funded by Health NZ and related services.

It will cover the current National Telehealth Service, which includes Healthline, mental health and addiction services and other services under contract that are due to expire in June 2025.

It excludes hospital and specialist telehealth services, except if they overlap with primary or urgent care, such as ambulance and emergency department telehealth services.

This review is timely because telehealth services have changed over time with technology advances and changing needs and demands. They have become a practical option for people seeking health care and for health providers, leading to increased use, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It will consider the experience and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic about the benefits, challenges and improvements identified for telehealth services.

The review will explore areas where the National Telehealth Service, related services and other telehealth services can improve equity of access and outcomes and work better to support primary care and community health services.

It will set the direction for the design and procurement approach for the National Telehealth Service, and other telehealth services. No decisions on procurement of the National Telehealth Service will be made until December 2024.

Telehealth is a broad umbrella term and is defined by the NZ Telehealth Forum as Health care delivered using digital technology where participants may be separated by time and/or distance.

There are different types of telehealth. For example, teletriage consists of a call centre and other digital channels that provide basic health information, advice, and triage services to refer people to relevant resources and services. Healthline and other helplines, such as 1737, are predominantly teletriage.

Telecare or Virtual Care uses digital technology to support direct care beyond advice or referral, such as immediate urgent care, medication prescribing, symptom monitoring (verbal, online survey or use of remote monitoring devices), brief intervention, counselling, etc. The Rural Clinical Telehealth Service combines free teletriage and fee for service virtual medical consults.

The review will be completed by about September 2024 and involves a series of workstreams including:

• An international literature review.
• A stocktake of telehealth services funded by Health NZ.
• A utilisation assessment focusing on the National Telehealth Service and the Rural Clinical Telehealth Service.
• Capturing internal and external stakeholder insights, including the establishment of an Advisory Group to advise on key findings of the review.
• A process to obtain service user insights that focuses on the five priority populations identified for the review: rural communities, Māori, Pacific peoples, disabled people, and people aged 65 and over.
• Cost analysis, including an assessment of cost per use and related service costs.
• Exploration of a procurement process and options throughout the review to inform a formal procurement plan once the review has been completed. See here for future procurement opportunity notice on the GETS website.

• Frequently Asked Questions (PDF 93KB)
• Frequently Asked Questions (DOCX 382KB)