Telehealth services are offering assessments for ADHD, as some people seeking a diagnosis for the condition don’t want to wait months for an in-person consultation.
Since February, GPs and nurse practitioners have been able to diagnose ADHD and prescribe medication for it.
It isn’t mandatory for GPs and nurse practitioners to specialise in ADHD, meaning many GP practices aren’t offering the service.
That means many people are turning to virtual assessments instead. After suspecting for a few years that she may have ADHD, Nikki (who didn’t want her surname used) decided to act last year.
She had seen that GPs would soon be offering assessments so, after hearing about the long wait times and high cost of getting diagnosed through a psychiatrist, she thought she’d see her doctor when the rules changed.
But when February rolled around, her Palmerston North GP gave her the news she didn’t want to hear.
“So I went to my GP and said ‘Hey I’d like to do this, and she was like huh we don’t do that here in Palmy, we haven’t got a collective of GPs to be able to do that yet, maybe in July we might have one, do you want to wait?’ And I was like no.”
Frustrated she had waited longer for no reason; she was referred to an online telehealth service.
Her teenage son was also diagnosed through telehealth, and she said for both of them it was pretty much smooth sailing, bar the cost.
“You go to book and it was like $972 and you had to pay upfront, so I kind of prioritised [my son’s] one first, and then I did mine a few months later.”
Stuart Cowley (left).
Supplied
Despite the cost, Nikki said that finally getting a diagnosis was more than worth it.
“It’s changed our lives, we can concentrate. My son in particular can sit at the desk I bought him five years ago which is amazing, and for me it just means I can pay attention more in meetings.”
After spending his whole life being labelled a ‘poster boy’ for ADHD, at 53, Stuart Cowley decided it was time to get assessed.
Like Nikki, he’d heard about the GP changes and decided to wait for nearly a year until they were brought in.
“We did some research into looking into getting it done privately and then we held off specifically for the reason that I would have preferred to go to my own GP obviously having that connection already and her understanding me as a person.”
But, like Nikki, his GP didn’t offer the service.
Cowley ending up choosing a telehealth service and was diagnosed by a psychiatrist.
He said the hour and half online consultation was simple, and two weeks later he received the diagnosis he was expecting, something he said had been a gamechanger.
“If we’d had known the GPs weren’t going to be doing it then we could have got it underway a lot quicker.”
Stuart Cowley and Nikki are part of a growing number of Kiwis getting assessed for ADHD via telehealth.
One of those services is ADHD Simple, which also operates in the UK and Australia.
Founder Cameron Houston set up the company after struggling to get his own ADHD diagnosis in New Zealand.
Once he had established the service overseas, he decided to launch in New Zealand after hearing about the changes allowing doctors and nurse practitioners to assess for ADHD.
“It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, demand has been very high, very quickly, I think as soon as we established a name for ourselves, and what we stood for and what we were able to deliver, demand has, I’d say that demand in the early stage has outstripped supply.”
Not everyone is convinced by the online model, with some clinicians worried about the level of service offered over the phone.
President of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs, Dr Luke Bradford, said while it was a positive for those living rurally, telehealth had its drawbacks.
“They’re not able to do the complete job and they’re often not following up either, often there’s a diagnosis, and ‘ok we think they’ve got it’, and starts giving notes back to the GP as opposed to an ongoing treatment plan, and they can’t see and examine the patient in person.
“So, I don’t think it’s the best model for this, but it certainly is an option, given the examination is essentially verbal as opposed to putting your hands on someone to examine.”
Psychiatrist Dr Caleb Armstrong has been doing ADHD assessments via telehealth service, Validus, since 2019.
He said telehealth was now a standard part of healthcare, and the level of service and experience clinicians were offering was more important than the form in which it was delivered.
“Whether a service is telehealth or not is not much of a marker of its quality. It’s been well established for many years that telepsychiatry for instance is equivalent for outcomes, and much better for access compared to going and having to see a doctor in person.”
Dr Bradford said he worried that telehealth providers could be missing out on checking blood pressure and doing echocardiograms, both important checks during an ADHD diagnosis.
While they couldn’t offer those over the phone, Dr Armstrong said they required their patients to have those tests done by their own GP before they received a diagnosis.