Children and disabled people may benefit from telemedicine visits most of all, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Imagine how hard it is for some people to get to a physician’s office, especially those with disabilities such as movement disorders, or children. For them telemedicine has proven very helpful, but is poised to ramp down after special allowances during the pandemic. Brian Hasselfeld, director of telemedicine at Johns Hopkins, comments.

Hasselfeld: Not all care is perfect for telemedicine, but we should allow convenience and access and choice to be a main component of what we do in patient centered design. With many states after a seizure or a stroke you can’t drive for six months. Those patients aren’t getting to make the easy choice about go to the visit or not, they’re making the choice of how am I going to do that? How much easier would it be to do that virtually, I mean how much more patient centered would it be to do that virtually? Many patients are struggling not with oh of course it’s easy to go to that visit, I might not be able to go, period.  :32

Hasselfeld encourages everyone to reach out to lawmakers. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.