As I mentioned in my last post, Baltimore recently had a rare blizzard that shut the city down for several days while everyone dug out.
I actually saw patients almost all of one of the days of the blizzard, did a lot of Skype video calls, and a lot of telephone calls, too.
I really noticed the age effect on telepsychiatry on that day. Basically, about half my patients that day were below about 30 years old, and the other half was over 30.
Pretty much all the 30 and under crowd had Skype set up on their computers and things went very well except for a couple of people who didn’t have Internet access because of the storm.
A couple of people over 30 Skyped in; most called in instead.
The age effect is really striking to me.
I’ve been pondering what to make of this. I know that I have to do my best to take care of all these people, but it is really clear to me that I’m doing a better job with the younger patients (because of Skype) than the older ones on days where people can’t get to their appointments.
In my last post, I mentioned that I’m becoming more insistent that patients who are frequently sick enough to go to the hospital get set up for Skype, but what about the rest?
Not so sure what the best thing to do for the over-30 crowd. Education in what Skype can do, or wait for them to come to it in their own time?
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