Table 2.

“Silver Linings” of Telehealth for Primary Care Physicians.

“Silver Linings”	Perspectives of primary care providers
Demonstrated remote care delivery was feasible	We are now able to do telemedicine, and telling the honest truth, I would say that over 60% of the cases I see in the clinic, can be seen via telemedicine. I really honestly don’t feel that I need to see most of these patients in person. There are things that require for me to see them in person. But in the end, I really think that I can handle a lot of these cases via telemedicine. (I) I think that easily a third, maybe a half of primary care from my perspective can be done through Telehealth. It’s been great. I mean certainly there’s types of visits, follow-up of chronic disease, maybe other every other visit or check in visit, support and counseling, mental health problems, one problem issues often can be seen and addressed. Yeah feel like it’s been really good for that and I like it and hope it stays. (N) I think for chronic care, virtual health is good. It’s the acute care sometimes that you need to sometimes see them in person. There are certain aspects where you have to see them once a year to exam their feet, let’s say a patient with diabetes needs to have their foot exam once a year, so there are certain things you have to do, but I think a lot of it can be covered by virtual health now. (R)
Patients expressed gratitude	They [patients] almost felt like more grateful. . .when you would you call and be like, hey, I’m just checking in. Oh my gosh, thanks so much for calling, even though they had an appointment. . .there was a lot of gratitude from patients to say, you know, thanks for transitioning to make me, you know not have to come into the office, that sort of thing. It was just like thank you so much for calling me, this is my problem. Can you send me this refill? So can you do this? (H) I feel like they’re grateful to have a connection [with me]. (N) I’ve had some say they really like this, just for the reasons I said, they didn’t have to drive to the office and they appreciated us reaching out to them through this and they like the modality. (R)
Payers adapted insurance coverage to fully reimburse for telehealth	So, in light of covid-19 pandemic, Medicaid and Medicare essentially said, hey, we’ll pay for telemedicine and then all the other insurance for companies essentially said we’ll pay for telemedicine. (F) And then I just think, obviously, like the payer, the reimbursement for telehealth has fortunately been handled in a way that we are able to do it and people don’t have to worry about this is a one-off and it’s some charge I’m going to get I’m not going to understand. (M) So now it’s kind of like pretty much everybody [insurance companies] covers it [telehealth]. So, I think you know, that’s the silver lining that I see of this whole thing is ramping up the telehealth, because even when we get back to whatever normal is in the past two to five years, I think it’s going to be important way for patients to have access to care (S)