Doing That Thing You (Can't) Do (Virtually).

TheOneEeders

PlayToneVille


Well, here's is something interesting in our privatized, rush to the bottom of just about everything.

Including visits to the doctor that aren't.

People who used a virtual-only medical service — a kind of virtual walk-in clinic — during the pandemic were more likely to later go to an emergency room than patients who did appointments with their own family doctor online, a study by Toronto researchers has shown.

The study published Thursday in the Journal of Medical Internet Research explores the different outcomes between two kinds of virtual medical care during the pandemic — that given by walk-in-style clinics and that given by family doctors.

Conducted by the University Health Network, ICES, Women’s College Hospital and Unity Health Toronto, the study found that the patients who saw a physician who was not their family doctor through a virtual-only medical service were twice as likely to visit an emergency department within 30 days...

So.

What's the deal?

Well, it turns out the difference is what is NOT done virtually:

...The study showed that patients who had a virtual-only walk-in appointment often had a virtual followup and then ended up in emergency, in contrast to patients who had a virtual appointment with their family doctor and then could have an in-person followup, possibly avoiding a hospital visit because they were able to have a physical exam.

The “concern with virtual walk-in clinics is the lack of a physical exam,” says Lapointe-Shaw...

Take that Chatbot-GTP-Turbo-Deluxe-Fakes-Better-Than-Memorex or whatever the heck fire we will next be told will take the place of actual, real things...

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Header, image and somewhat lame sub-header?...This.

The story cited, above, was written by Patty Winsa and published in the Toronto Star yesterday.

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