Using virtual care to support transition care

Published: May 2025. Next review: 2030

Virtual care can support a smoother transition for young people moving from paediatric to adult healthcare services. This page outlines the benefits, opportunities and considerations for using virtual care.

Virtual care uses technology to safely connect health professionals with patients, their family and carers to deliver care when and where it is needed.

Virtual care modalities, such as telephone and videoconferencing, support people to connect and collaborate across different locations. Videoconferencing is especially useful during transition care, as it allows everyone to connect face-to-face and ensures the young person’s history and needs are understood before their first appointment.

Benefits of using virtual care

• Safe and comprehensive handover of care by paediatric clinicians to adult clinicians.
• Convenient and cost effective as it removes the need for the young person, their family, carers and clinicians to travel to and from transition care meetings.
• Continuity of care, providing general practitioners (GPs) and other care providers the opportunity to be involved in transition care discussions without leaving busy private practices.
• Flexibility, offering a hybrid approach for all participants to meet in person or virtually, supporting the individual needs and preferences of all participants.

More about the benefits of virtual care.

Opportunities for virtual care to support transition

• Joint transition clinics: structured clinics where both paediatric and adult clinicians attend with the young person (with or without family and carers). Appointments may be in person, virtual or a combination of these.
• Case conferences: organised, as needed, involving multiple paediatric and adult clinicians, the general practitioner (GP), and sometimes the young person and their family or carer. Appointments may be in person, virtual or a combination of these.
• Last appointment handover: adult clinicians join part of the last paediatric appointment, virtually.

Practical considerations

Registration and scheduling

The patient needs to be registered, and the appointment needs to be scheduled with the services relevant to all clinicians involved. This includes services across different local health districts and specialty health networks.

Recording activity

• If the appointment is scheduled in each service’s electronic medical record (eMR), the activity will be registered for billing or activity-based funding purposes.
• Medicare billing is available for specialists even if they have not seen the patient ‘in-person’ first.
• Identify the mode of delivery, and if a hybrid approach is used, it is recommended to choose the virtual mode, e.g. if videoconferencing was used, select "audio-visual". GPs can access items from the Medicare Benefit Scheme for telehealth conferences and appointments which requires the patient to be known to them.

Clinical documentation

Each clinician enters clinical documentation for the appointment. They will determine who provides a clinic letter or summary document.

More on service funding, budgets and reporting relating to virtual care.

Resources and contacts

• Virtual Care in Practice Guide
• Your local virtual care manager or lead (NSW Health staff only) can help set your service up to deliver transition care virtually.