Connecting NDIS participants in regional areas
Ian, 32, lives in the small Wheatbelt town of Merredin about three hours east of Perth and a long way from specialist disability support services. Ian broke his back in a quad bike accident at age 19 and has been a T4 paraplegic since then.
“I grew up not far from Merredin on my family’s farm and I’ve always wanted to live around here, it’s just a great community,” he says.
At the time of his accident he was an apprentice aircraft maintenance engineer and subsequently studied accountancy.
“I’m now the administration manager for an engineering company building road train trailers, we’ve got multiple sites across WA,” Ian says. “I’ve been here three and a half years and just love the lifestyle, but obviously the downside is that there’s limited rehab services out here in the bush.
“After my accident I did three months of rehab but since then I’ve only done a bit of physio.”
Ian joined the NDIS in May 2019 with a goal of improving his fitness and his NDIS Support Coordinator enrolled Ian in NeuroMoves, “but that was never going to happen what with full time work and the need to travel to Perth”.
“About April this year NeuroMoves let me know it had moved its programs online and pretty much straight after that I got assessed by a couple of their consultants on the GPNow platform, then they set out a program for me to work on my core strength and build endurance,” he says.
“Now I do one Neuromoves session a week online with an exercise physiologist, then back it up with another four sessions a week by myself. Before I started I’d only be able to push 50 metres in my manual wheelchair before I was stuffed, now I can push 300-400m without any dramas at all.”
Neuromoves is an innovative exercise and therapy program offerd by SCIA (Spinal Cord Injury Australia) for people living with spinal cord injuries and neurological conditions. SCIA have partnered with GPNow to enable the program to be delivered to clients in the comfort of their own homes, including in regional and remote locations, thanks to the GPNow telecare platform.
What are telehealth services?
Telehealth services connect people with the health and wellbeing professional that they need via a dedicated, secure, and private platform.
Using a telehealth service, practitioners can speak with their patients or clients over a confidential video chat.
At GPNow, we help practitioners provide quality care remotely. We’re an all-in-one digital health platform provider.
An SCIA Therapist working with a client on the GPNow platform.