Jason Fish, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Southwestern Health Resources (SWHR), recently talked with Patient Engagement Hit about how the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted clinical healthcare's reliance on technology, and the potential pitfalls of that trend.

The healthcare industry was put in a position of struggling with patients' delayed care while trying to figure out how to deal with the pandemic, Fish pointed out. "The good thing that came out of that was innovation."

He noted that the rapid expansion of telehealth visits last year had benefits for clinicians as well as patients.

"You get a chance in these visits to see where there potentially are social determinants of health that may be playing themselves out," he said. "During the office visits, you don't necessarily know any of that. You can ask about it, but you may not necessarily get the most honest answers sometimes."

Fish also said that healthcare professionals need to rethink how telehealth fits into overall clinic operations "because flipping from a face-to-face visit into a telehealth visit and then back into a face-to-face visit is a little bit difficult."

The full article is available on the Patient Engagement Hit website.