SwiftDoc is the brainchild of GP Dr Richard McMahon, who saw a way he could help patients anywhere in Australia by offering a much-needed alternative to the traditional method of in-person healthcare delivery.

After engaging a team of highly-skilled IT professionals, and with much testing and care, the SwiftDoc app and website was launched. From this platform, Dr McMahon, and his colleagues were able to offer GP consultations to a range of different people such as:

• Rural and remote Australians, who would otherwise have to travel long distances to access medical care,
• Busy Australians, who found it difficult to take time off work to travel to medical appointments,
• Stay at home parents, who needed medical care for themselves or their children,
• Older Australians, who no longer drive, or find it hard to attend medical appointments when they need to,
• FIFO workers, who find themselves unwell when working in remote areas of the country,
• Holiday-makers, who are far from their regular GP when they fall ill.

It wasn’t long before Australians from all corners of the country were receiving medical care via smart phones, tablets and laptops from the comfort of their own homes and workplaces.

From one service grew many, as the idea of online healthcare took hold

Dr McMahon and the SwiftDoc team didn’t just need to promote SwiftDoc as a platform for receiving medical care, but also needed to educate and inform many patients on this different method of receiving healthcare. For some, buying gifts, doing the grocery shopping or doing banking online was becoming the norm. But healthcare? That was a big step for many to take.

Over time however, the team proved that online healthcare could be just as effective as in-person healthcare for most health issues, without the inconvenience of traveling to a doctor’s surgery and being up and about while unwell.

New services were being added regularly, allowing patients to access other healthcare such as psychology, sexual health, support to quit smoking and dietitian support. The introduction of e-scripts for those who needed a prescription, and alliances with providers for services such as pathology and radiology further streamlined services for patients.

With this growing list of services came a growing team. A strategic partnership with medical recruiter Wavelength International helped SwiftDoc gain access to some of the best doctors available, scaling up quickly as demand increased.

The Covid factor

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to push things along if you’re an online health provider! With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic came an increase in the need for online medical appointments, particularly for the lockdown periods when many Australians were unable, or unwilling to leave their homes. As well as providing much needed care during this time, this quick shift in understanding in the general population about online healthcare helped to push Telehealth appointments into the mainstream.

As well as growth in the number of SwiftDoc consultations, extra services such as supervised Rapid Antigen Testing for international travel and for employees were quickly set up to further help Australians navigate their way through the pandemic.

Moving beyond the individual into the corporate world

While expanding services available to individuals, SwiftDoc has also been busily working to establish a service for our corporate customers. Through WorkCover workers’ compensation insurance services, SwiftDoc can offer a service that helps employees who have been injured or fallen ill at work while also helping their employers navigate the sometimes-complicated insurance claims system. This service, fully paid for by the insurer has proven to be a real growth area for SwiftDoc, and we now have a long list of companies that we regularly work with.

For the employee, it provides fast access to the medical care they need to assess and treat their injury or illness, getting them back to good health, and back to work as quickly as possible.

For the employer, it takes away the stress of managing a WorkCover workers’ compensation claim as SwiftDoc takes care of the paperwork requirements for the insurer, while also taking control of management of the healthcare needs of the employee.

It’s proving to be a fast, effective and cost-effective way to manage WorkCover workers’ compensation claims, and as the word spreads, we expect this part of SwiftDoc’s business to grow exponentially.

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