Medibank’s Amplar Health calls on WA public health system to ‘turbocharge’ adoption of home hospitals

The boss of Medibank’s health services business has called on WA’s public hospitals to ramp up their adoption of “virtual hospitals” as the country grapples with a stretched health system. Amplar Health chief executive Robert Read said in many respects, WA had already experimented with different virtual health settings, pointing to the State’s remote monitoring service Health in a Virtual Environment, or HIVE, as an example. “The thing I like about WA is that there is some level of experimentation . . . just by virtue of the remoteness of (the State), you have to deliver more and more virtually,” he said. “What we’re really calling for is that to be turbocharged.” Mr Read wants WA’s public health system to increasingly adopt and embrace home hospitals — also known as virtual hospitals — that replicate the care in brick-and-mortar hospitals. It blends telehealth with face-to-face care by doctors, nurses and allied health practitioners. “The ageing population is such a pressure point into a system that wasn’t designed for that, we were designed for trauma settings,” Mr Read said. “So the nature of our system has to transition to something that’s better at handling complex, chronic disease and that means a bigger emphasis on different care models, looking after people more frequently in their homes.” Amplar is owned by insurance giant Medibank and operates telehealth consultations and at-home care. It sees about one million telehealth appointments and four million consultations a year. The company, on behalf of South Australian government department SA Health, also delivers the My Home Hospital service that aim to provide patients acute hospital-level care in the comfort of their own homes. Mr Read said it had been used by more than 18,000 patients in South Australia since it was established in 2021, freeing up tens of thousands of physical hospital beds in the process. “There’s an opportunity (for WA) to team up with SA and run some experiments . . . to see whether the same or similar models can adopted here,” he said. Mr Read’s comments come after a Medibank-commissioned report recently revealed home hospitals could treat up to 30 per cent of diagnoses treated in traditional hospitals. It found that if Australia started expanding home hospitals now, up to 350,000 patients who would otherwise be in a hospital bed could be treated at home in 2030. This could deliver savings of up to $1 billion in healthcare costs and more than $6b in capital expenditure.