Telehealth corporates face a potential clampdown after the Medical Board of Australia put out draft guidelines warning GPs not to rely on text or email consultations for first-time patients. 

The board is consulting on updates to its telehealth guidelines, which have not been touched since 2012 — almost a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the role of telehealth in Australia.  

The draft has a new section on prescriptions that warns: “Prescribing or providing healthcare for a patient with whom you have never consulted — whether face to face, via video or telephone — is not good practice and is not supported by the board.  

“This includes requests for medication communicated by text, email or online that do not take place in real time and are based on the patient completing a health questionnaire but where the practitioner has never spoken with the patient.