What Covid-19 Taught Us About Telemedicine

The Covid-19 pandemic created the perfect test lab for telemedicine.

Future access to virtual care in future depends on the fate of policies adopted at the start of the pandemic, when the federal Medicare program and private insurers began paying doctors the same rate for virtual consults as in-person visits and loosened other restrictions that sharply limited the use of telemedicine in the past.

Doctors were taught to virtually check a patient for a wide range of symptoms that could signal a serious illness, such as breathing problems, pallor, a yellowing of the whites of the eyes, and gait problems.

Then, on the video call, clinicians work with families to engage children, finding creative ways to conduct a neurological exam, such as engaging them with their toys to get them to move their arms to assess strength.