Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) is expanding access to virtual mental health support for patients.
Thanks in large part to a generous $50,000 donation from RBC Foundation, patients can now receive timely and clinically- appropriate care from the comfort of their own home.
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to shut down our programs in March, presenting us with an opportunity to re-evaluate how we provide our services” says Brian Irving, manager, Addiction Services and North Simcoe Muskoka RAAM services. “To prevent a lapse in care, we transformed a number of RVH’s Mental Health and Addiction outpatient programs for virtual care delivery to ensure patients continue to receive mental health support during the pandemic.”
RVH’s Adult Mental Health Day Program and the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine Clinics (RAAM) brought all counselling appointments online through the use of telemedicine.
The introduction of virtual care has reduced the Adult Mental Health Day Program’s waitlist by 85 per cent and brought the average wait time from eight months to 11 days.
If you would like to support patient care at RVH, you can make a donation online by clicking here.