A recent NY Times article quoted Humayun Chaudhry, DO, President of the Federation of State Medical Boards:
“It should be the same exact standard as if the patient was in your examining room. You can’t cut corners."
He seems to imply that an audio/video contact (such as with Skype) must equal a face to face visit. I wonder whether he would say the same thing about telephone contact between patient and physician which has been part of the standard of care for years, and which suffers from lack of any visual contact.
Should not "standard of care" be applied to the entirety of the patient-physician relationship rather than to an isolated component of that relationship?
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Great point. And such rigid thinking will deprive patients in isolated areas of the potential to benefit from medical care that would otherwise be unavailable to them.
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