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The name of our initiative is the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Service: Enhancing patient care.
So basically what we do is offer an outreach service,
so although it's based at the hospital, most of the care that we deliver is actually done
via email, via phone calls, and even SMS.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease, or IBD as we call it, is an uncommon chronic disease.
It usually affects young people and obviously these people have got other
things to do in the lives beyond being sick, and coming to hospital.
So although we need to follow them up frequently to ensure they stay well,
we don't want them traveling from Port Lincoln, and Ceduna, and Whyalla all the time,
which used to be the case
and they used to be seen only when they were sick.
So we used to have a very reactive model of care, and that meant that they were
only being looked after and being seen
when they presented to the emergency department, and we no longer have that happening
because we're able to intervene a lot earlier with proactive care and better follow-up.