As telemedine catches fire, its earliest critics are embracing change

Published October 16, 2020 by Rebecca Robbins on STATnews.com

If you’d talked to Joe Heyman around the 2000s, you might have taken him as a telemedicine naysayer. Back then, the Massachusetts OB-GYN was highly skeptical of the rash of new services sprouting up to remotely connect patients and physicians. He was wary, he told STAT, of patients "calling a total stranger and asking for clinical care," and worried about building trust when a new doctor picked up the phone every time. He never once conducted a visit via video by the time he retired from seeing patients in 2014.

He only wishes he’d had the chance.

Being able to see his patients via video-conferencing tools such as Zoom, a technology that was only just starting to gain traction in his final years in the clinic, "would have been wonderful" — even though he’s still skeptical about talking to a provider you’ve never met, he said.

Continue reading