“only if it’s really urgent,” she said, ducking underneath the hatch that had started to close. “and even then, only after a phone consult.”
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as i watched her drive away, her words reminded me of a story we posted this week from the conversation written by dr. sheila singh. a pediatric neurosurgeon, singh writes about the devastating deluge of delayed diagnoses among children with brain cancer caused by strained hospital resources and “alarmist” public health messaging around covid-19 that made families apprehensive about visiting doctors’ offices and hospitals. as a result, she is now seeing children in the end stages of their disease — children whose lives, she says, could have been saved if they had been diagnosed just six months earlier.
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and then there are the cost savings . according to saskatchewan-based lumeca health — virtual care is good for the wallets of not only patients (think the money spent on transportation), but it also financially benefits doctors (remote communications save 16 per cent in operating costs) as well as employers (ease of access to medical care can bring down the more than $16.6 billion that employee absenteeism costs businesses every year). in the united states, the savings that result from virtual care are a little more in your face: an in-person visit can cost around $146, whereas a telehealth visit runs you about $79.
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john seabrook writes about the diagnostic limitations of online care in the new yorker , quoting his own doctor, martin beitler, who isn’t a fan of virtual visits: “you can’t have a belly exam via a screen.” beitler also adds that telehealth at its worst promotes a “knee-jerk, ‘give them antibiotics for every cold that they get’ attitude.” another doctor worried that virtual care will “delay proper exams and get in the way of deeper interactions between people and their doctors.”
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