Primary care
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Telemedicine was underused and understudied until the COVID-19 pandemic, during which reduced regulations and increased payment parity facilitated a rapid increase in telemedicine consultation. Telemedicine literature to date suggests that it holds benefits for patients and health care providers, may result in outcomes not inferior to in-person care, and has cost-saving implications. Future research should investigate which conditions are best suited to assess and treat via telemedicine (including physical exam elements), what techniques improve telemedicine communication, how to help patients equitably access telemedicine, and how to best educate the future health care workforce.
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Urgent care as a distinct clinical care entity began in the 1970s to treat low-acuity conditions. Virtual urgent care (VUC) can be provided by the primary care physician (PCP) or home health system of the patient, and many commercial direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies have emerged to provide this service. ⋯ VUC has been proposed to improve equity and access to care, but early evidence is mixed. New utilization owing to convenience may lead to overall higher health care costs.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need for behavioral health care services. A substantial portion of mental health care transitioned to virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic, remains virtual today, and will continue that way in the future. Mental health needs continue to grow, and there has been growing evidence showing the efficacy of virtual health for behavioral health conditions at the system, provider, and patient level. There is also a growing understanding of the barriers and challenges to virtual behavioral health care.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, providers and patients explored the use of telehealth on a wide and rapid scale. Reflecting on how prenatal providers and pregnant patients used telehealth during the pandemic and afterward, we review existing and new lessons learned from the pandemic. This article summarizes international and national guidelines on prenatal care, presents practice examples on how telehealth and remote patient monitoring were used during the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers lessons learned and suggestions for future care.
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Telehealth programs existed in many subspecialities before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the public health event motivated many subspecialties to reflect on how current technologies could be leveraged to benefit patient outcomes and increase health-care access. This article reviews the history and current state of telehealth access in many areas of subspecialty care. Primary care physicians (PCPs) may be unaware of the telehealth services and options local subspecialists offer. To best serve patients, PCPs could partner with subspecialists to develop processes to link patients to the right subspecialist at the right time and in the right visit type.