Table 1 Benefits of telehealth

Patients: convenience, reduced burden

I think the calling is a good idea because you know for patients in my situation, it’s quite a chore for me to get up and get ready to go to the doctor.

[Over the phone is] easier because I don’t have to look at nobody and talk. (Laughs)

I told [my provider] about my pain and she made sure I had all the medications that I needed at the pharmacy. And she asked me what I needed and she made sure that that was there. So I was grateful for that because I was out of pain meds

Providers: ease of access, improved monitoring, and urgent care availability

You know [patients] pick up their phones. I guess it’s a convenience factor, it’s much easier to pick up your phone than actually travel to the clinic. [And] it might have also been that a lot of people were unable to work for a period so they were available to us…[T]he vast majority, I’d say 90% of the care is happening through phone right now and that’s been…good in some ways. Our show rates are a lot better.

I think there is also a big group of people that you know were uncontrolled [for chronic health conditions] because they would never come in and see us that now we’ve been able to track [them] down by phone…And our pharmacist at [this clinic] does a lot of chronic care management for diabetes and hypertension so have done a very good job with outreach for many of the patients they were following…But yeah that cohort of people who we just could never find now we’ve found some of them and cured them.