Project ECHO™ is an innovative model of telementoring and case based learning, designed to "democratise medical knowledge" and deliver practical medical care to patients in communities that lack ready access to specialists. Whether the difficulty accessing specialists is due to remoteness, poverty, cultural barriers or other factors,ECHO helps to address the inequity faced by those patients.
Through videoconferencing technology and a structured case presentation format, local healthcare providers including nurses, community healthcare workers and GPs are mentored by experts in metropolitan centres to deliver specialist-level care.
There are currently very limited public health services in Queensland for children who are overweight or obese. Heath practitioners often do not want to treat them because they either do not want to raise the topic, no secondary services exist, or they are unsure of the treatment options. Tertiary services are delivered from the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital with satellite sites at Ipswich and Logan to help manage this problem.
The paediatric obesity ECHO series has been introduced to scale access to specialist advice, supporting providers across Queensland to build sustainability, enhance system capacity, and grow an empowered workforce. As frontline service providers, GPs can support systematic change and build capacity to combat this issue, ensuring evidence-based care is provided for children and families into the future.
Using Project ECHO™ as an enabler in the public healthcare system, it ensures maximum integration of care across providers, facilitating more practitioners in delivering ongoing, family-centred specialist care and management of children who are overweight or obese in their local community, regardless of geography.
To ensure we provide the right care to the right patient at the right time, the Project ECHO™ paediatric obesity series continues to be delivered to GPs and other primary healthcare professionals statewide with impressive results thus far.
