Sabesan, Sabe, and Brennan, Sean (2011) Tele oncology for cancer care in rural Australia. In: Graschew, Georgi, and Rakowsky, Stefan, (eds.) Telemedicine Techniques and Applications. In Tech, Rijeka, Croatia, pp. 289-306.

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Abstract

Rural cancer patients in Australia and other countries with significant rural populations face difficulties with accessing various sub specialist services mainly because of shortage of health care work force and long travel distances to access these services (Underhill et al, 2009). Partly as a result, their survival is lower than their urban counterparts (Campbell et al, 2001; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2010; Sabesan and Piliouras, 2009). To improve equity of access and quality of life, clinics and treatment centres should be located closer to homes in rural towns. Currently, there are several models of care exist to address some of the issues as follows (Underhill et al, 2009): (1) medical oncologists travel to larger rural towns and chemotherapy is administered there. Frequency of these visits range between weekly to three monthly intervals; (2) patients travel to larger centres for consultation and return to their home towns to receive their chemotherapy; (3) patient’s travel to major towns to see the specialists and to receive chemotherapy. These models are often inadequate, expensive and cause problems for patients, specialists as well as rural doctors who would ultimately care for these patients.

Item ID:	33955
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	978-953-307-354-5
Additional Information:	Chapters under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.
Date Deposited:	13 Jul 2017 05:26
FoR Codes:	11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1117 Public Health and Health Services > 111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920299 Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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