Speech Therapy: Overcoming Service Delivery Challenges
Residents of rural and remote Australia often experience disadvantages and inequalities when it comes to healthcare access and delivery. Traditionally, access to speech and language sessions for children has been restricted to in-person visits. As a result, access to speech therapy for children living in rural and regional areas has been extremely limited and non-existent in many remote areas.
The introduction of telehealth has played a critical role in increasing accessibility to health care, as speech pathologists across Australia have the resources to reach more children in remote areas.
Telehealth is rapidly becoming an essential part of speech pathologists’ core business model, with research demonstrating that telehealth-delivered assessments achieve comparable results to in-person consultations.
Here, we delve into the role telehealth can play in overcoming the challenges of delivering speech therapy services for children in regional and rural Australia.
Read the full article here.