Telemedicine widely utilized by El Paso doctors, medical students since start of pandemic
EL PASO, Texas -- The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the medical industry in more ways than one.
Chances are if you’ve had a doctor's appointment in the last two years, your appointment might have been over video chat or even over the phone.
The pandemic accelerated telemedicine, changing how quickly and efficiently you can speak to your doctor.
"Covid was the real impetus to start implementing telemedicine," said Dr. Colby Genrich, a family and sports medicine physician with Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso.
Dr. Genrich said it's a way to reach more patients adding that it's now a part of doctors' everyday workflow.
He called it one of the few positive outcomes brought by the pandemic.
"The obvious challenges for us with telemedicine was just not being able to touch the patient, feel if that a patient has a fever, see things that maybe an in-person visit would allow us to see," he said.
But overall, Dr. Genrich said feedback from patients has been good. He along with a third-year medical student at the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, Jordan Ward, are working on a project to see how patients are responding to telemedicine. Patients said they find it easy and cost-effective.
“It's eliminated a lot of those barriers to care where they don't need to get into a car and battle traffic or ask a neighbor for a ride, or pair bus fare. I mean, they just get on their phone and able to access a physician."
It’s even shaped how medical students are being taught.
"(The physicians) let us as students typically call the patient or do a video chat with a patient 15 minutes before their scheduled appointment time," Ward said. "So we get that same experience of going through all of the information on our head and learning how to develop a good differential diagnosis."
A tool Ward said he’ll use once he graduates as he plans to pursue the family medicine specialty.
"I think that this definitely is will play a large part in the future of health care, and bringing health care to underserved populations like we have a lot of here in El Paso," Ward said.
To learn more about Texas Tech Physicians of El Paso, click here.
