A new set of National Telehealth Standards was released in early March by Patients Australia, an independent not-for-profit organisation, to strengthen “safety, quality, and trust in virtual healthcare across the country.” 

The standards were developed by the Australian Telehealth Standards Consortium, a group made up largely of telehealth companies and insurers, including Healthdirect, Medibank, HCF, BUPA, Eucalyptus, 13SICK, and Wesfarmers Health. 

The document “sets clear expectations” across several areas, including clinical governance, patient safety, informed consent, continuity of care, and data security. 

But the guidelines have not been endorsed by any relevant regulatory body or professional organization. Moreover, the standards are neither new nor “national,” Alan Taylor, PhD, associate lecturer at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Adelaide, told Medscape News Australia. 

“Australia has had guidelines on telehealth and how to do it for the past 15 years. The content is not new, but what they’ve done as an industry group to get its affairs in order is welcome. It will contribute to the national standards ecosystem,” he said.

“But it’s industry guidelines — I don’t know why they’ve put the word ‘national’ in it when it’s not government-endorsed. The government will welcome it, but it won’t endorse it.”

A Surge in Telehealth 

The government, through the Australian Digital Health Agency, is trying to bring all players involved in virtual healthcare together to examine a range of issues regarding the safety and quality of virtual care, including standards and guidelines, Taylor explained.

Like other countries, Australia experienced a huge surge in the use of telehealth at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Statistics from the Centre of Online Health at the University of Queensland show that in 2024, there were 32.5 million telehealth consultations through the public system. In 2019, only 0.1% of Medicare benefits schedule services were delivered via telehealth, compared with 17% in 2023.

As the telehealth industry has expanded, so has the number of private telehealth clinicians and insurance companies also offering the service. There are no publicly available figures for private telehealth consultations, but, according to Taylor, “there’s big money in it.” For example, telehealth company Eucalyptus was sold for $1.6 billion AUD. 

In 2023, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency published updated telehealth guidelines to “raise standards, protect patients” and address certain issues, including closing the gap “between some online prescribing business models and good model practice” targeted at individual clinicians. No government-endorsed standards exist for telehealth-only healthcare providers. Other professional organisations provide guidelines on the use of telehealth and virtual care, including the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, and Standards Australia.

Continuity of Care Essential 

The industry standards are a “positive step,” Rob Hosking, MBBS, chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners expert committee on practice technology, told Medscape News Australia. He particularly welcomed the focus on communicating with a patient’s usual general practitioner (GP) and updating the My Health Record, both of which are “essential for safe, high-quality care,” he said. 

“However, we continue to urge patients to have telehealth consultations with their usual GPs to avoid fragmented care and the increased risk of medical misadventure. Continuity matters, especially when medicines are prescribed,” Hosking added. 

“If medicines are prescribed without a patient’s regular GP knowing, there’s real potential for serious interactions or duplication. Convenience should never come at the expense of good medicine and high‑quality care.”

The principal concern about telehealth is a lack of continuity of care, agreed Taylor. “When people consult an online service, their regular health professionals might not know about it. Both parties deserve complete transparency to ensure the right thing is done. A for-profit company may wish to get people in and out the door very fast and not actually upload that information,” he said.

The Patients Australia standards stipulate that virtual care providers “must enable and encourage secure information sharing by supporting uploads to My Health Record and timely communication with a patient’s usual GP. 

“When patients withhold consent for this information sharing, practitioners must consider and document concomitant clinical risks, exercise heightened prescribing caution, and may decline treatment where risks outweigh benefits,” it added.

The key requirements for the long-term sustainability of telehealth are developing a skilled workforce, empowering consumers, funding reform, improving digital ecosystems, and integrating telehealth into routine models of care, Anthony Smith, director of the University of Queensland’s Centre for Online Health, told Medscape News Australia. “In Australia, we are addressing all these requirements with varying degrees of success,” he said. 

“We need to be mindful of including digital health literacy and equity of access,” Smith continued. “Telehealth and virtual care services can be an excellent means of reaching people who normally would have difficulty travelling for their appointments…but if not managed well, it can also create a divide between those who can access these services and those who can’t. It’s also been shown to be an excellent way of supporting our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in community-based health centres. I believe further work needs to be done to engage more with First Nations communities to develop new models of care which address their needs and preferences.” 

Taylor, Hosking, and Smith reported no relevant financial relationships.