My Emergency Doctor has called for governments to permanently fund specialist-led virtual emergency services, in response to a new report highlighting growing pressure on emergency departments from Australia’s ageing population.
Following the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine’s (ACEM) State of Emergency 2026: Australia’s Ageing Population report, the company said virtual emergency care should be incorporated into national health funding arrangements rather than supported through short-term pilot programs.
My Emergency Doctor said 71 per cent of its consultations involving patients aged over 50 between September 2025 and September 2026 resulted in patients being managed where they were, without requiring a hospital transfer.
For patients aged over 50 receiving consultations in residential aged care, the figure was more than 90 per cent, according to the company.
The figures come as ACEM reports that emergency department presentations by older Australians increased 16.3 per cent between 2018-19 and 2023-24, compared with 4.1 per cent for younger patients.
The increase was particularly pronounced outside metropolitan areas, with presentations by older people rising 25 per cent in regional emergency departments, 27 per cent in rural departments and 33 per cent in remote departments.
ACEM also found that 50.7 per cent of older patients arrived at emergency departments by ambulance, while 50.9 per cent were subsequently admitted to hospital.
My Emergency Doctor medical director Dr Tatiana Lowe said a lack of access to senior clinical advice was contributing to potentially avoidable hospital transfers.
“The ACEM report describes what our emergency physicians hear every night from aged care nurses and paramedics. The decision to transfer a frail older person is often made because no one senior can be reached in time,” Dr Lowe said.
“Objectively, an emergency physician is an excellent choice to assess a frail elderly person prior to hospital transfer. We are senior clinical decision makers, and we are also the doctors who end up assessing the patients in the ED, often transferred in direct opposition to their own stated advanced care directives.”
Dr Lowe said emergency physicians could provide assessments remotely, working alongside nurses, paramedics and other clinicians to determine whether patients needed hospital care or could be safely managed locally.
“The fault of the transfer does not lie with the nursing home staff or the ambulance staff or the next of kin: it lies in a lack of senior decision making, a lack of holistic perspective, a lack of knowledge of published evidence. Emergency physicians are trained in these exact skills, all of which can be deployed virtually. We can change that transfer decision safely, at scale and right now.”
Call for national funding
My Emergency Doctor, established in 2016, said it has completed more than 350,000 consultations and provides 24-hour access to emergency medicine specialists supported by qualified GPs.
More than 400 health services across Australia use its FACEM On-Demand and Virtual Admission Services, which support local patient assessment, hospital admissions and overnight care in facilities without an on-site doctor.
The company is seeking five policy changes under the 2026-2031 National Health Reform Agreement and National Health Reform Strategy.
These include recurrent joint funding for virtual emergency care, specialist virtual triage before non-critical transfers from residential aged care, integration with ambulance secondary triage, expanded support for rural and remote hospitals and nationally consistent reporting of patient outcomes.
The company said virtual emergency physicians could assess patients by video alongside clinicians physically present, review clinical information and establish treatment, prescribing, pathology, follow-up and escalation plans.
It also pointed to evaluations of existing virtual emergency services, including a Metro North Queensland study involving 2080 referrals that found 70 per cent of community-triaged patients avoided a physical emergency department presentation.
A separate southeast Melbourne evaluation found 79 per cent of virtual consultations involving residential aged care patients avoided hospital transfer.
ACEM’s report recommends joint Commonwealth, state and territory investment in emergency medicine telehealth for residential aged care and community services, alongside expanded virtual emergency departments.
My Emergency Doctor said virtual emergency care should complement, rather than replace, investment in hospital beds, aged care capacity and emergency department staffing.
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