by 
Dr. Meeta Shah speaks with a patient virtually though a video chat at Rush Hospital on 1620 W Harrison St in the Illinois Medical District, in early August. | Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Doctor visits rapidly switched to video calls over the past several months, a practice that will live on beyond the pandemic.
Bringing her 14-year-old son, Alessandro, into Chicago for doctor’s visits has been a heavy burden on Ramona Gonzalez.
As a baby, Alessandro’s brain was deprived of oxygen and, as a result, he needs a ventilator to breathe, a feeding tube to eat, he’s deaf and blind. In recent years, Gonzalez has had to bring her son from Matteson to La Rabida Children’s Hospital on the South Side, which specializes in caring for medically complex chronically ill children. Sometimes, she has to load him in an ambulance along with his medical supplies and equipment.
“It’s a lot,” she said.
But over the past few months, Alessandro was able to see six doctors from La Rabida in three exams conducted over video. It was a godsend for Gonzalez during a pandemic she feared would endanger her son’s life.
“It was really good,” she said. “I don’t want to risk him getting any disease.”
One of the many things the pandemic has changed is the way people see their doctors. Almost overnight, patients began switching to so-called telehealth visits, a trend that’s expected to last.
“We went from doing zero telehealth … to within a week, we were doing 80% telehealth,” said La Rabida Chief Medical Officer David Soglin. “Over time, we’ll find the right balance. For some of these complex kids, maybe we do two personal and two telehealth visits a year. We’re still learning.”
Insurers largely didn’t cover telehealth visits until March as the pandemic forced new practices. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for an expansion. Around the same time, the federal agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid and private insurers agreed to reimburse doctors for such visits as they would for office appointments, something they weren’t willing to do in the past. Doctors interviewed say telemedicine will expand as long as insurers pay. Multiple bills in Congress encourage it.
In a statement, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, the dominant private insurer in Chicago, said it views “telehealth as a mode of delivering health care that will remain a part of our health care landscape.”
More frequent contact
Proponents say telehealth creates opportunities for doctors and patients to stay in contact more frequently. Federal health officials cite telehealth as a tool to help prevent heart attacks, strokes and other conditions.
Still, doctors stress that video and phone exams have their limitations and patients are often asked to come in for personal visits to avoid potential mistakes. Medical errors already lead to tens of thousands of U.S. deaths a year, research shows.
Many visits to specialists, such as gynecologists or ophthalmologists, can only be done in person.
Advocates for children with a broad array of special health needs point to …read more
Source:: Chicago Sun Times
