Telehealth vs Traditional Doctor Visits: Pros, Cons, and When to Use Each
A video visit and an office visit are two ways of doing the same job: a history, a decision, and a plan the patient can carry out. One of them can examine the body. The other can happen without travel. The right one is the one that can actually answer the question being asked.
What does not change
The clinician still has to be licensed where the patient is located. The chart still has to include the medicines, the allergies, and the problem in the patient's own words. A prescription, if one is written, is still a clinical decision that can be a no. Telehealth does not create a lower standard, and an office does not create a higher one by virtue of the waiting room.
The legal outline of an online prescription is in is a prescription online legal. A plain description of the video visit itself is in what telehealth is.
When a video visit is enough
Video or a structured clinical exchange fits problems that are decided from history, photos, and labs that already exist or can be ordered:
- Follow-up of a medicine that was started recently, including side effects and dose changes.
- Refills of a stable medicine when the history has not changed in a dangerous way.
- Erectile dysfunction, pattern hair loss, and many weight-management decisions, once red-flag symptoms are excluded.
- Straightforward infections in which the clinician judges that an exam would not change the treatment.
- Review of labs the patient already had drawn.
The advantage is access. A person who will not take a half day off can attend a visit that would otherwise be skipped. The limit is the same advantage: the clinician cannot listen to the lungs, feel an abdomen, or take a blood pressure unless the patient has a cuff and uses it.
When the visit should be in the room
Go in person, or to emergency care, when the problem is one of these:
- Chest pain, trouble breathing, fainting, one-sided weakness, or a severe headache that is new.
- A injury, a wound that needs closure, or a joint that cannot bear weight.
- Abdominal pain that is severe, or pain with fever after a procedure.
- A pelvic or breast complaint that the clinician says requires an exam.
- Any problem where a previous clinician has already said an exam is the next step.
Telehealth can still be the first call that tells the patient to go in. That is a successful visit, not a rejected one.
Labs, vitals, and continuity
An office can draw blood and check vitals in the same hour. A video visit orders the lab and sees the result later. For a dose change that depends on a lab, the video visit is not slower in a way that matters if the lab is drawn this week. For a decision that depends on today's blood pressure or today's oxygen, the office, or a home reading the clinician trusts, is the setting.
Continuity matters more than the room. A clinician who can see the prior dose, the prior side effect, and the prior no is doing a different job from a new questionnaire every month. Whether that clinician is on a screen or in an office is secondary to whether the chart is the same chart.
What this article does not do
This page explains the decision. It does not approve a medication, set a dose, or replace a clinician who can see the rest of the history. Seek in-person or emergency care for severe or rapidly worsening symptoms.
Who this is for in New York
The patients this page is for live in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany.
This article is for those patients when they are deciding whether a video visit or an office visit fits a visit with New YorkDoc.
How the New YorkDoc visit applies
The New YorkDoc visit for this topic starts with a structured intake covering symptoms, medications, allergies, and prior treatment response. A New York-licensed physician (NY) reviews whether a video visit or an office visit is appropriate, whether labs are required, and whether another approach is safer. If a prescription is indicated, it is sent to a pharmacy the patient can use in New York. That prescription is not a referral to a New Jersey clinic across the Hudson or a Pennsylvania clinic from the Southern Tier.
Local access
A patient in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Albany should compare a video visit or an office visit with care already available through NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, or NYU Langone, not with a New Jersey clinic across the Hudson or a Pennsylvania clinic from the Southern Tier. Labs, when needed, can be drawn through a local partner in New York.