Physicians Can Make Most of Telehealth—Even After COVID’s Gone

A couple of years ago, just about every physician in the U.S. knew that telehealth would one day be a cornerstone of their practice, but few could have foreseen that it would so quickly become mission-critical because of a pandemic. And while COVID-19 will one day ebb, a new clinical reality has set in: Most practices will never go back solely to in-person visits.

About a year into this seismic shift in care delivery, most physicians appreciate that telehealth can close the geographic gap between them and their patients. But many also think telehealth puts limitations on what they can accomplish—say, because of a perceived lack of biometrics—even though the opposite might be true.

The lesson to take from the last year is not just that telehealth is indispensable in a pandemic, but that it is now a permanent feature of the health care landscape, Dr. Shah noted.