Health Beat: The Downsides of Virtual Medicine

You know…one of the most annoying parts of my professional career is dealing with all of the misinformed people who think they know how I practice without ever having experienced it themselves.  This person says:

“Consider the work of Jay Parkinson, who is on the forefront of the web-based health care movement. Working entirely through IM and video-chat, Parkinson’s patients are primarily the uninsured—not the systemically impoverished and socioeconomically isolated uninsured, but rather the self-selecting uninsured: the freelance artists in Brooklyn, the 18-40 aspiring bohemian crowd, the hipsters. “

People don’t understand that I use the internet to communicate, not diagnose.  I communicate with my patients via the internet and see them in their apartments.  I think one of my partners put it best:

“Why is it people react in such a balck and white way to this stuff?  I have IM, Does it mean I’ll never email again? I have email. Does that mean I never speak to someone on the phone anymore? Oh yes, I have a phone…I’ll never see you in person again.

Yet that is exactly how people treat these technologies, as opposed to seeing them all as part of a continuum, kind of like life.”

Anyway, it’s rather annoying…especially when written by someone who has a solid grasp on what they are talking about.