For more than 20 years, James Kearney, MD, has been seeing patients at Pennsylvania Hospital, where he serves as chair of Otorhinolaryngology. He considers his practice a “well-oiled machine,” from the front desk to having the patient exam room ready to the patient intake, and throughout the entire visit. Then came COVID 19 and suddenly telemedicine — seeing patients remotely from home — became the new “normal.”
Kearney is one of hundreds of physicians to quickly adapt to this new way of seeing patients. Indeed, since mid-March, there have been more than 300,000 of these virtual visits throughout Penn Medicine.
Not every condition Kearney treats can receive adequate care via telemedicine, but for some conditions, such as sleep apnea or sinusitis, “I can yield a diagnosis 80 percent of the time just based on taking a history.”
Equally important, patients are very grateful to have this access — all feedback has been uniformly positive. And he finds it gratifying as well. “We have the capacity to provide care — particularly for older, fragile patients who at highest risk — connecting with them but keeping them safe.
The switch, said Kearney, has taken a little time to get used to. But then, he noted wryly, “When the telephone was first invented, people had to learn the etiquette of saying hello when someone called… It takes a while to develop normal patterns.”