COMMENTARY

The technology of telemedicine will predictably and steadily get better.
Medical assistants, mostly human at present, are commonplace, notably in specialty offices, and machines using improving voice-to-text transcription are getting better.

Wearable devices are proliferating and hopefully coming down in cost, and platform technology is improving though still glitchy.

Patients generally accept Telemedicine. They like the saving of travel time and infection exposure.

Doctors may drag their feet because the increased effort and legal exposure is not compensated by increase in payment. On the contrary, pre-Covid compensation was LESS for a televisit. Continuing Parity would help.

The politicians at the state level should eventually make licenses valid across state borders.

The big wild card is the Legal Profession. Unless they develop restraint( and litigious patients reform), there could be a feeding Frenzy, which would delay implementation of a very good idea.

Eventually telemedicine deserves to be 50% or more of medical practice.

—Dr. C.