Telemedicine has been a crucial part during the time of pandemic to seek out the best possible care in the cancer community. Across our large statewide practice of 640 practitioners at 221 sites of service, an aggressive multidisciplinary telemedicine strategy was implemented in March by coordinating and training many different parts of our healthcare delivery system. From March to September, telemedicine grew to serve 15%-20% of new patients and 20%-25% of established patients, permitting the practice to implement safety protocols and reduce volumes in clinics while continuing to manage the acute and chronic care needs of our patient population.
In the United States, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer screenings decreased by 80%-90% and cancer encounters with clinicians decreased by 40%-50%. We characterize implementation of telemedicine across our large statewide practice with 640 clinicians at 221 sites of service.By late October, our practice conducted > 50,000 telemedicine visits with patients yet had a substantial gap in the number of new and established patients from what we had forecasted we would serve year over year.
At last one can say that it did a lot in managing the problems and further improving the community cancer care. .
https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/OP.20.00815
