Emergency Consult CEO, Jenni Falconer, won the Emerging Leader of the Year Award at the 2023 Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.

A business specialising in online emergency health care, and its CEO, has won big at the Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards.

Emergency Consult and its CEO Jenni Falconer, entered the competition for the first time and left the awards as champions.

Falconer has been recognised as the Emerging Leader of the Year, and the business received the Innovation Award.

In the late 1990s, Falconer served as a nurse alongside the three co-founders of Emergency Consult and during that time, they attended to about 50 patients daily in the emergency department (ED), and the waiting times were not excessively long.

Twenty years later they saw a need for change when the number of patients arriving in ED and after-hours clinics had increased significantly and wait times became lengthy.

They came to the solution of a tele-health service in 2019, where Emergency Consult provided 24-hour urgent care remotely with a team of doctors and nurses treating patients on-demand via web-based video chat.

When we set it up, we were working in emergency medicine and saw all these people turning up to ED and wondered how do we take ED to the people?

We thought we could help people who were time poor and who could afford to pay to see a doctor, she said.

Emergency Consult was then approached by the Waikato DHB during Covid-19, to help support people stuck at home and who needed to see a doctor.

It quickly became evident that there was a huge demand for remote specialist support from within the healthcare sector itself.

Emergency Consult was now opening a bricks-and-motar clinic in Ppmoa, Tauranga, as a trial because Falconer said the population had mushroomed, and Tauranga Hospitals ED was under considerable pressure.

Youll come in, be quickly seen by a nurse who can either help or direct you through to a virtual consult with a doctor and it will include a team of high-skilled nurses supported by the tele-health model.

Were always looking at where the next need is. We know thats an acute mental health service, paediatrics, and in palliative care.

Falconer felt humbled to learn her team had nominated her for Emerging Leader of the Year.

To be a leader you need to have a team. Ive surrounded myself with people whove helped make this journey easy in some ways and certainly enjoyable.

It was a really nice surprise to find out theyd nominated me and then to read what theyd written. The judging process was a great opportunity for reflection. You do forget how far youve come.

Emergency Consult has grown rapidly with almost 90 staff from an initial start of eight, with a range of healthcare providers utilising the tele-health service today.

Emergency Consults team of emergency medicine specialists provided virtual support to hospital EDs, rural clinics, nurse-led clinics, ambulance services and pharmacies.

A different team of senior registered nurses also provided covid care, acute care triage, and aged care support.

Falconer said the tele-health service has been emerging internationally as a cost-effective and convenient means of delivering health care, and they were going a step further by offering 24-hour on-demand care.

The Waikato Chamber of Commerce Business Awards were overseen by a panel of 29 judges who evaluated 76 business entries from Te Kauwhata to Taup.

The annual awards are run by the Waikato Chamber of Commerce with support from Hamilton developer Foster Construction, and the winners were judged across 11 categories this year.

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Waikato Business Awards 2023: Emergency Consult CEO wins ... - New Zealand Herald