Can virtual health care help save a collapsing system?

In today’s The Big Story podcast, most of us have had a virtual health-care appointment sometime during the pandemic. Those of us that didn’t almost certainly encountered virtual care of some form or another. As we enter the post-pandemic era, there is a push by some for more virtual care.

Dr. Tara Kiran is the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation at the University of Toronto. She’s also a family doctor and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. As one of the researchers on a study that asked Canadians about what they’d like from primary care, Dr. Kiran said most people wanted virtual care to supplement in-person visits.

“They want [virtual care] to be integrated with the in-person care. So having a standalone virtual care clinic isn’t meeting their needs or what it is that they want,” said Dr. Kiran.  

So how available is virtual care to Canadians at the moment? And can it benefit us, or does it simply create more visits, encourage unnecessary appointments and further burden an overtaxed system? There’s a line we need to walk here — can we do it?

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