What is Telehealth?

Telehealth is the use of information and video conferencing technologies, to deliver health services and/or transmit health information to a patient when the clinician is in a different location.

We use Gensolve Telehealth, which is a secure, encrypted video consultations practice management platform to stay in touch with our clients. Consultations by our subcontractors and other medical practitioners will be carried out either on Gensolve or Microsoft Teams.

Telehealth allows the therapist to connect with you securely to understand your current state, review your progress, give advice, and adjust or advance your exercises, discharge you from our care, or if necessary, to set up another appointment. All this without you needing to be in the same place.

This service will generally be available for all our services and contracts, although we recognise there are some limitations of this platform for physical assessments which we will aim to work around.

ACC considers that Telehealth appointments count as one of your allocated number of consultations and have provided funding to enable such services are available to everyone.

What do you need for Telehealth?

For a Telehealth appointment with your therapist to work via Gensolve Telehealth, you will need:

• To be in a private ‘safe’ place, ideally at home or in a private office space.
• To have provided an email address and mobile phone prior to the telehealth call to enable us to access you through our practice management system.
• To have access to a computer, tablet, smartphone or laptop with good internet connection. The best browser to use for these platforms is Google Chrome.
• To have video conferencing capability (in-built camera or external webcam).
• If using your smartphone, you will require WIFI or suitable cellular network coverage for Telehealth to work.

Gaining access to Gensolve Telehealth

Gensolve Telehealth is a secure, fully integrated platform for telehealth video calling services.

Telehealth appointments are carried out either through your desktop/laptop webpage link or on your mobile device via the Telecommunication medium ‘Jitsi Meet’ (available on App Store or Google Play on your smartphones, or automatically done via your computer).

Clients will be emailed our TBI Health Registration form, including consent for the video consultation, prior to the initial assessment. This is to be completed and returned prior to the assessment.

Clients will also be sent an email with the date, time and link for the telehealth call.

If you are accessing the service through your smartphone app it is recommended you download the App prior to the session. “Jitsi Meet”.

At the time of the appointment, the therapist will call you via Gensolve Telehealth through the unique video call link and access code, which you will be prompted to enter on the Gensolve pop up and then it’ll ask to open via Jitsi Meet app.

What to expect from your Telehealth consultation?

A Telehealth appointment is the same as a normal in-person consultation except the patient is in a different location from the clinician. You can expect the same level of engagement as you would in a normal in-person appointment.

The clinician may need to see you in person, later, if they feel that a physical examination is necessary and providing this is possible.

• If you feel that Telehealth is not something you are comfortable with, please let us know and you will be offered an in-person appointment with the clinician whenever possible.
• You have the right to have a support person with you, please make the clinician aware that you have someone with you. Please also let the clinician know if during a phone call that they are on speaker.
• You need to be in a private ‘safe’ place, ideally at home or in a private office space. This is to protect your privacy and the information that is passed between you and the clinician may not be something you want the person sitting at the next table in the cafe to hear.
  Driving during a Telehealth consult is also not advised for safety reasons.
• If the clinician decides, at any time during the Telehealth consultation, that a physical examination is necessary, then this will be discussed with you and you either booked in by the therapist or contacted by our TBI Health admin to book an face to face appointment whenever this is possible.
• Please be aware that these appointments need to be limited to a set amount of time as there will be other patients waiting after you. If the appointment before you does run over time we will endeavour to let you know.
• We request that you respect the clinicians right to privacy and not record the consultation. A description exercise programme, education video and appointment notes can be sent to you after the appointment on request.

Should the connection fail, the therapist will conduct the assessment over an alternate platform or arranges an alternative option (possibly by phone).

Accessing Gensolve Telehealth from your computer

1. You will receive an email from your therapist titled ‘Telehealth appointment and the appointment time details’.
2. Click the ‘Open Telehealth’ link and you will be automatically taken to the Gensolve Telehealth interface.
3. If it opens under a different browser and reads ‘error’ please copy and paste the URL and enter it into a Google Chrome browser.
4. Please then enter your unique access code.
5. You will be asked to consent to allowing your microphone or video required in order to connect into the telehealth appointment – if you need to adjust these, they are situated in the bottom right 3 dots, ‘settings’.
6. If you are connected before your therapist, you will be in a waiting room area and your clinician will join you shortly.

Using a smartphone device

If using your smartphone, you will require suitable WIFI or network cellular coverage for Telehealth to work.

We also recommend you download the Jitsi Meet app onto your smartphone prior to your appointment. You will be prompted in your email link to do this. This is a free, secure, telecommunication app available through your smartphone app store that allows patients to receive video calls.

How to install the App

1. Search Jitsi Meet on your smartphone App Store (or Google Play for Android).
2. Click Get (free).
3. Install the app on your phone (takes 1-2 minutes).
4. You will also be prompted to do this if you open the Telehealth link on your phone under Option 1.

Accessing Gensolve Telehealth from your App

1. You will receive an email from your therapist titled ‘Telehealth appointment and the appointment time details.
2. Click the ‘Open Telehealth’ link and you will be automatically taken to the Gensolve Telehealth interface.
3. If it opens under a different browser and reads ‘error’ please copy and paste the URL and enter it into a Google Chrome browser.
4. Please then enter your unique access code.
5. Then you will be prompted to connect to the video calling app ‘Jitsi Meet’ for the consultation.

Troubleshooting / Common problems

Using Gensolve Telehealth

Firstly, ensure that your laptop default browser has been set as Google Chrome – Gensolve Telehealth is best supported on for browser.

Some computers can’t do this (government or company assembled computers that may block this platform or have Internet Explorer as your default that can’t change). If you can’t do that please download Google Chrome (if possible) and copy the URL link into Google Chrome from your other browser.

Accessing Gensolve Telehealth from your App

• Please check you are capable of using the preferred browser Google Chrome.
• Connectivity: Sometimes internet connection and bandwidth are a problem for telehealth calls that do not have a stable, strong connection. Please ensure you are in a strong WIFI area or connected on your computer. This connection can be seen at the top left of your video call window.
  Sometimes disabling your video can assist, but this is a key feature of your telehealth appointment so is discouraged.
• Junk Mail: sometimes the email can be sent to your junk email.
• Please ensure your app or computer have consented to allowing your device microphone and camera, not consenting to these disables the web portal/app ability for this.
• If your microphone or video are not working, please look in your setting button on the bottom right of the telehealth screen to adjust what input sources are being used.

Using a smartphone device

iPad devices do not see to easily support this app.
iPad devices are not automatically prompted to install the ‘Jitsi Meet’ application and instead are shown an incompatible browser window. In order to install the app please view the Mobile version of the website which should give option to install the application.

Contact

If you have any issues, please contact your clinician to troubleshoot any problems or discuss alternatives.

Feedback

We would love to hear your thoughts on how it went and if there is anything that could be improved. Please email us back with any feedback, good or bad.