Telemedicine can be so much more than a substitute for clinic visits. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater amid concerns about short teleconsultations and excessive MC issuance, say Jeremy Lim and Koh Lin Pin.
very short teleconsultations
Patients with well-controlled chronic conditions, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, can have remote follow-ups substituting some of the in-person visits, saving time and increasing convenience for both doctors and patients. There can also be other benefits from using telemedicine. The American group Kaiser Permanente reported in 2019 that having dermatologists remotely supporting primary care doctors in examining photos of skin lesions resulted in better diagnosis of skin cancers and a reduced need for patients to undergo a biopsy.
For example, the telemedicine consult can begin even before the physician engages “live” with the patient through use of symptom questionnaires, and can extend hours or even days after the first interaction through automated follow-up queries or check-ins. Seen in this light, telemedicine can be viewed as a “video” of patients’ clinical evolution rather than just a one-off “snapshot” observation.
As the equivalent to the legal profession’s case law builds up, telemedicine’s boundaries will naturally become clearer and doctors and operators will know more specifically what would be permissible and what would be frowned upon.Third, we should not infer from the MaNaDr Clinic episode that consultation times and MC issuance are the metrics to determine the safety and quality of clinical care in telemedicine.
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