Consult capture in the medical record-a twelve month audit of a new paediatric teledermatology service

Abstract

The year 2017 has seen the roll-out of a new paediatric teledermatology service at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Queensland, Australia. This service aims to bring the LCCH in line with other tertiary-level dermatology departments in Queensland, which have previously implemented teledermatology services with great success.1 Incorporating both store-and-forward and live telehealth branches, this service aims to provide a formalised conduit of referral for external practitioners (GP's, paediatricians, emergency doctors) to seek dermatology opinion. The main challenge in provision of a gold-standard teledermatology service was identified at the outset of service provision as timely and appropriate recording of consult data in the medical record. Achieving this allows for case searchability, safe long-term storage of information and images, and satisfies requirements for billing each telehealth consult. A preliminary trial of administration-officer led transfer of consult data to the electronic medical record was implemented as a simple, immediate means of satisfying this need in the first twelve months of service provision. We present a twelve month clinical audit of our service's ability to transfer teledermatology consult data to a patient's electronic medical record and suggest future directions for our service based on these results.L6221323322018-05-18 <br />