Whilst we are talking about Urgent Care Clinic and After Hours Medical care…

We want to inform people of a (relatively) new service called the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (or VVED) which we feel may be of help to patients.

Go to www.vved.org.au and have a look.

The VVED triages and treats patients with non-life-threatening conditions virtually, and is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This service is the first of its kind in Australia. It has been running since 2020 and was set up by Northern Health to initially help with the pandemic but has expanded since then. It is a public health service for non-life-threatening emergencies (and has a helpful chart listing those conditions suited to the service).

It offers access to emergency care from anywhere in Victoria, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Once logged in you will be connected to doctors and nurse practitioners, who are trained to assist you. And it is a free service.

Presentations in Urgent Care at SGH have been steadily increasing over the past few years and this has a significant effect on the doctors doing on-call work. Reducing the number of call outs for non-emergency presentations will help preserve our medical (and nursing) workforce. It is not likely to be a good fit for everyone, but seems like it could be a good first port of call for many.