Serving Patients Through a Screen
My patient’s trip to the clinic had taken her nearly two hours—a subway, a bus, and enough traffic to jack up her blood pressure by an additional 10 points. Plus, she was missing a day of work—and pay—as a contract cleaner. When I asked her if she would prefer a televisit for our next meeting, she nodded gratefully.
To put my biases on the table, I’ve always been a staunch defender of old-fashioned, one-on-one, direct medical care. In my career as a primary-care doctor, I’ve stressed the irreplaceable value of the connection between patient and clinician not just for the human element, but for the documented medical benefits.
However, doctors and nurses would ill serve our patients if we didn’t retain the capacity to change. Years ago, when telemedicine first edged into my consciousness, I pooh-poohed it as a second-rate simulacrum, valuable perhaps for rural communities
