Telehealth is a godsend, but it certainly has its shortcomings
About 50 doctors in the UK (16 GPs) are known to have died from COVID-19 in the line of duty since the start of the pandemic.1
This has resulted in an increase in the use of telehealth there and the advent of Medicare-funded telehealth here in Australia.
This is fantastic for us, as all those urgent late-evening calls for grossly abnormal pathology results and the like can finally be claimed via the MBS — letting us leave behind years of pro-bono work on the phone.
But during the pandemic, GPs in the UK were lambasted for hiding behind telephones and patients ‘never’ being able to ‘see’ a doctor for their ailment.
