From the ground up: Learnings from the development of an innovative statewide adult urgent virtual care service

Virtual Care (VC) enables clinicians to remotely assess and manage healthcare needs. While many healthcare services have integrated virtual components into existing in-person care models, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted organisations worldwide to rapidly develop new VC services from the ground up. This article outlines the establishment of a statewide adult urgent VC Service, detailing its conception, development and the first 6 months of operations. The conceptual phase (7 weeks) involved the project team collecting data and insights from stakeholders to build a business case for the VC Service, with a focus on two referral pathways. The development phase (7 weeks) included creating the model and establishing infrastructure, a workforce, and governance to ensure a high-quality, timely and safe service. The initial operations phase (26 weeks) fully integrated the first two referral pathways. During this time, the leadership team completed recruitment, developed a learning system, expanded operating hours and built a model to expand its referral pathways. The leadership team plans to enhance VC by improving assessment capabilities and by enabling new referral pathways into settings such as aged care. Including research methods in this model is essential to capture the benefits and risks associated with these important changes in healthcare delivery.