As regular readers of these ongoing posts will know, Santa Monica Primary Care responded to #COVID-19 by employing telemedicine and video consultations early in the epidemic. At this point in time, about 50% of our patient encounters are via one of these modalities. The CDC has further recommended leveraging telemedicine technologies and self-assessment tools as a way to protect patients.

The initial intent of a telemedicine encounter is to assess a patient’s risk based on known exposure or travel. Further, it permits us to quickly identify high risk patients or those who are sick enough to need hospital care.

Given evidence in Los Angeles County of person-to-person spread we now have moved to identifying those patients with milder symptoms who can be monitored at home so as to limit the spread of this disease and not overwhelm our healthcare facilities.