There’s an interesting article, published this week by Max Pemberton, in which he discusses his experience of seeing his GP via an online video service.
Skyping Your GP?
19 Jun 2019
With our experience in both General Practice and the wider health service, there were plenty of concerns that we’ve heard from GP’s before. Not being able to poke, prod, and test a patient obviously represents issues and in Max’s case, he ended up getting the wrong diagnosis not once, but twice. There were issues too around logging into the app – probably teething issues, but if you’re unwell that kind of thing matters.
However for me, as a patient, I couldn’t help but think that for some ailments, a video diagnosis is so much more preferable to having to go to the GP. If you work long hours, away from home or if you can’t get an appointment at the doctors for a few days, then wouldn’t you rather have the option of speaking to someone medically trained?
And the premise that only the young will use it, leaving the older patients to burden practices, has some validity, however, the young are often causing problems elsewhere. Our team carried out an analysis of an A&E department in the Midlands about 18 months ago, during which we found that they had a huge chunk of 25-35-year-old patients, not willing to wait to see the GP, so instead of presenting at A&E. If we could avoid that by offering video appointments, then at least we’re fixing an issue somewhere.
And anyway – surely this is all preferable to a telephone appointment?
