When should you opt for a telehealth visit versus seeing a doctor face-to-face? Physicians offer guidance about when it may make more sense to choose one or the other.
swept the country in early 2020 and emptied doctors' offices nationwide, telemedicine was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Patients and their physicians turned to virtual visits by video or phone rather than risk meeting face-to-face."It was a dramatic shift in one or two weeks that we would expect to happen in a decade," said, a professor at Harvard Medical School whose research focuses on telemedicine and other health care delivery innovations.
Maybe your insurance has changed and you need a new primary care doctor or OB-GYN. Or perhaps you have a chronic condition and your doctor has suggested adding a specialist to the team. A face-to-face visit can help you feel comfortable and confident with their participation. Once it's clearer how the patient is coping and responding to treatment, that's a good time to discuss incorporating telemedicine visits.This may seem like a no-brainer, but there are nuances. Increasingly, monitoring equipment that people can keep at home — a blood pressure cuff, a digital glucometer or stethoscope, a pulse oximeter to measure blood oxygen, or a— may give doctors the information they need, reducing the number of in-person visits required.
Abdominal pain could signal trouble with the gallbladder, liver, or appendix, among many other things., an internist who is president of the American College of Physicians. Contraception is another area where less may be more, DeNicola said. Patients can discuss the pros and cons of different options virtually and may need to schedule a visit only if they want an IUD inserted.When a new symptom crops up, patients should generally schedule an in-person visit. Even if the patient has a chronic condition like diabetes or heart disease that is under control and care is managed by a familiar physician, sometimes things change.
Video check-ins are effective for many people whose chronic conditions are under control, experts said.
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