How Can CLL Patients Take Advantage of Telemedicine?
How Can CLL Patients Take Advantage of Telemedicine? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
In light of the global pandemic, many providers expanded their telemedicine options so that patients can connect with their physicians virtually and avoid in-person visits. Expert Dr. Steven Coutre explains how this approach could benefit people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).
Dr. Steven Coutre is a Professor of Medicine in the Hematology Department at Stanford University Medical Center. Learn more about this expert.
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Transcript:
Dr. Steven Coutre:
Well, we are in a new era, at least temporarily, and, for example, we’ve switched almost exclusively to video visits. This had largely been used for patients who lived in remote areas. They didn’t have good access or ready access to healthcare providers, and so, the government reimbursed for those kinds of visits, but not for somebody who lived close by, for example.
Well, that all changed dramatically with the COVID infections, even for our patients on clinical trials. And we’ve done the grand experiment that never would have been done otherwise, of just suddenly doing all video visits, and I must say, it’s worked out quite well so far. I think patients are quite satisfied with it, by and large. It allows them to have their questions answered and continue to have appropriate monitoring if they’re on therapy, or even if they aren’t. And so, I think, when things improve, this will continue, to some extent. So, right now, I would expect that any CLL patient would have ready access to their hematologist or oncologist via video visit.
And also, I think this whole situation has promoted a lot more video conferencing, educational video conferencing. Not having to physically attend a conference in order to get information. So, I think they’ll see a lot more educational resources out there online for them.
Well, of course, with CLL, we’re also very interested in blood counts, as are our patients, and if we’re doing remote visits, or even if they live fairly close but aren’t coming in, we do try to get the lab work done, but that’s worked out quite well. We’re used to dealing with patients coming from far distances, and so, in the past, if we wanted to get a lab result in between visits, we would simply make those arrangements with their local lab. Everybody tends to have an internist, a family doctor that they see, and so they’re familiar with getting lab tests done near where they live, and in all cases, we’ve been able to accommodate that.
And now with the increasing of electronic medical record usage and interlinking of medical record systems, we can, for example, get lab tests done at a local lab and have those. Actually, those results are directly imported into the medical record. So, they’re easily accessible to us. So, I must say, it’s been a pleasant surprise to see how well this has worked.
