The paediatric weight management office visit via telemedicine: pre- to post-COVID-19 pandemic

Valerie M. O'Hara, Northern Light Health, Eastern Maine Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, WOW Pediatric & Adolescent Weight & Cardiometabolic Clinic, Orono, Maine, USA.
Starr V. Johnston, Northern Light Health, Eastern Maine Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, WOW Pediatric & Adolescent Weight & Cardiometabolic Clinic, Orono, Maine, USA.
Nancy T. Browne, Northern Light Health, Eastern Maine Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, WOW Pediatric & Adolescent Weight & Cardiometabolic Clinic, Orono, Maine, USA.

Abstract

Telemedicine is a powerful tool that erases many logistical barriers to care and may increase access. Due to the need for social distancing, the COVID-19 pandemic has temporarily reduced in-person visits for clinical care. Providers, clinical staff and patients are pressed to acutely learn new skills and adapt clinical care through the use of telemedicine whilst administrators, policy makers and regulatory organizations make changes to existing policies to meet this national emergency. Our tertiary care, interdisciplinary paediatric weight management clinic began the use of telemedicine 5 years ago to bring access to an underserved, rural population at their primary care office, which has allowed our clinic to pivot seamlessly to in-home telemedicine visits during the pandemic. Telemedicine rules and regulations are rapidly changing to meet the COVID-19 national emergency, but many supports for new telemedicine providers are already in place. In this article, we provide an overview of telemedicine components, policies and regulations. We review the operationalization of our clinic's telemedicine visit prior to the pandemic. We discuss how telemedicine services are impacted by COVID-19 and key resources are provided. Finally, we reimagine telemedicine services post-pandemic to expand effective, coordinated health care, particularly for patients with chronic needs such as obesity.