Have you ever experienced a persistent and severe common cold, only to be advised by your healthcare provider to schedule a telehealth appointment with your treating doctor?
Nowadays, medical clinics discourage patients from visiting their doctors in person, presumably to avoid the risk of infection for their staff who are required to wear masks.
Current treatment for persistent cough often involves an irrational response to the common cold, leading to concerns about the future of telehealth.
Telehealth medical treatment was introduced by Australia’s universal healthcare program, Medicare, to minimize the risk of community transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, including the common cold.
Prior to the pandemic, Medicare did not provide refunds for telehealth services, and treating doctors were not reimbursed for these professional services.
Originally intended to reduce the spread of COVID-19, the temporary telehealth arrangement has now become a permanent feature of Medicare and is firmly established in the provision of healthcare services.
During the pandemic, it often became impossible for doctors’ clinics to welcome patients to their premises because the bureaucratic requirements of lockdowns, quarantine, and isolation frustrated efforts to see them in person.
The applicable regulations provide that telehealth services, which include telephone and video meetings between the patients and treating doctors, may only be offered where it is safe and clinically appropriate to do so. Also, the patient must have an established clinical relationship with the treating doctor.
Not All Is Bad
The Australian Digital Health Agency revealed that telehealth services were provided to 18 million patients in Australia between March 2020 and July 2022, with over 118 million services offered. Over 95,000 practitioners utilized these services during this time.The statistics demonstrate that telehealth has made a significant impact on Medicare and played a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of care for countless Australian patients.
There is little doubt that the availability of telehealth has major advantages. Specifically, it is a welcome tool for people who live in remote areas and, therefore, have difficulties accessing a health clinic in person. For them, the telehealth service is instrumental in monitoring and protecting their health.
Of course, it does not offer a complete solution to the health problems of patients because they would still need to go to clinics for imaging tests and pathology services.
In addition, the security of personal health data transmitted electronically—all made possible by telehealth—is a major issue.
This was highlighted last year when a major data breach rocked Medibank Private.
The Verdict on Telehealth
So is telehealth a functional substitute for an in-person examination of a patient? Clearly not.There is anecdotal evidence that telehealth is often no more than a convenient method to obtain an electronic prescription, enabling them to buy their medicines. A proper diagnosis can hardly be made on the telephone or in a video meeting.
Nevertheless, although the pandemic has been conquered—somehow—telehealth has become an opportune tool to further bureaucratise the health services of the nation.
Returning to the issue of the common cold—Australian adults can expect between two to four colds per year—if the patient has a cough, he or she is likely to be told to organise a telehealth session with their doctor.
In the past, the common cold was treated merely as an unpleasant inconvenience that did not bother other people very much.
Now, those who suffer from a common cold are almost regarded as appallingly as people who suffer from leprosy, and they are positively discouraged from coming into the clinic. Indeed, having a cold is nowadays as worse a fate as leprosy was in the past: sufferers need to isolate and are barely tolerated in civil society.
And if patients turn up at the clinic, they often must wait on a bench outside. It is not uncommon for clinics to display prominent notices that those with a common cold must not enter the premises.
This modern-day victimisation has been caused by COVID-19 hysteria and the government’s treatment of those who are thought to be capable of transmitting the virus.
The pressure upon people who are suffering from a common cold to access telehealth may well have adverse consequences for their health, especially those who also need specialist care.
For example, patients who have lung disease often have a persistent cough, which cannot be easily treated because antibiotics will not satisfactorily ameliorate the situation.
These people, who obviously need the in-person caring and expert oversight of competent doctors, often find that they are relegated to a meaningless telehealth session—often because the situation restricts the doctor’s ability to make any helpful recommendations that are more promising than those revealed in a Google search.
This leads to a wider issue. Telehealth, because it is so readily accessible, tends to be overused. This, in turn, results in the squandering of financial resources and contributes to the bureaucratic breakdown of the medical system.
Surely, if a patient has an ongoing illness, such as a persistent common cold, they should not be forced to use the telehealth service but, instead, should be seen by their treating doctor in the clinic.
Indeed, to deprive people with a persistent cough from seeing a doctor in person is like being treated as a modern-day person with leprosy.
