Sunshine Coast Health teams are expanding telehealth services, now remotely fine-tuning implants for patients at their homes.
Bill Wiltshire said that before receiving his cochlear implant, his hearing problems had become so severe he couldn’t even effectively speak with his family on the phone.
“I got to a stage in my life where it was pretty lonely because of my hearing, I couldn’t converse with people very well,” he said.
Telehealth clinical nurse Amie O’Sullivan said cochlear implants had given the 94-year-old an opportunity to regain his quality of life.
“The first time I actually met Bill, we had to use a tablet screen with speech to text, because he couldn’t understand what we were saying verbally at the time,” she said.
However, the implants need regular checks and adjustments, and the ongoing service he needs operates from Brisbane.
“He lives in a residential aged care facility so he would have to rely on someone else for transport – it’s a really big day out, and he does have certain health conditions that affect his travel as well,” Ms O’Sullivan said.
The telehealth service means he can now have his appointment with the audiologist from the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, all from the comfort of his home.
The audiologist can even remotely adjust the volume and settings on his implants.
“The clinician in Brisbane actually connects remotely to the laptop and we plug his cochlear implant into the laptop and they’re able to program it from Brisbane with us there,” Ms O’Sullivan said.
Mr Wiltshire said it took the stress out of his appointments.
“At 94, you don’t need stress,” he said.
“That blows me away, the fact that I can sit here and talk to (clinician) Barbara (Plath): she’s in Brisbane and we can sit here and exchange things.”
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Ms O’Sullivan said telehealth was continuing to expand to new specialties, to make appointments more accessible to those who have barriers, such as medical conditions, holding them back from travel.
“It’s great working together as a state to get people the care that they need to where they are, we’re such a big area in Queensland that telehealth enables us to offer people care that they may not otherwise be able to access,” she said.
Sunshine Coast Health facilitates telehealth appointments from people’s homes, as well as from Sunshine Coast University Hospital, Nambour General Hospital and Gympie Hospital.
If patients are interested in telehealth appointments, they should ask their clinician if it would be suitable for them at their next appointment.
