Telemedicine

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Anchor lead: New expansion of Medicare will allow more people to be seen by their physicians via telemedicine, Elizabeth Tracey reports

The federal government is expanding payments and reducing barriers for people to be seen by their physicians via telemedicine in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Justin MacArthur, director of neurology at Johns Hopkins, says this is all to the good.

MacArthur: We’ve been using telemedicine for years, but we’ve clearly ramped up very substantially in the last couple of weeks, for obvious reasons. Patients love it. And we’re learning very rapidly that almost everything can be done via a telemedicine approach.  It’s amazing how much of the neurological exam you can do creatively through mimicking, through gesturing, through asking patients to do certain things. A lot of the examination is really observation and telemedicine really lends itself beautifully to that.  :29

MacArthur says that many medical visits can be accomplished very well utilizing telemedicine along with various apps and other technology, and advises people to reach out to their doctors to find out if such visits are possible. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.