If we can go back to March and April of 2020, beyond all of the issues with the virus itself,

there was tremendous concern that patients were going to get care.

And we were going to see as some people called it the second pandemic.

In the spring of 2020, while most of us were concerned with the first pandemic, Dr.

T. Barotra and other healthcare providers worried that patients who needed care for conditions

other than COVID for diabetes or for high blood pressure weren't going to get it.

Hospitals were overloaded with sick COVID patients and many medical offices were closed

to prevent the spread of the virus.

Luckily, there was a solution, but it was untested.

It's not that telemedicine didn't exist before the pandemic.

It just was happening in very small numbers.

Suddenly, telemedicine wasn't happening in very small numbers.

According to a CDC report from 2020, there was a 154 percent increase in telemedicine visits

during the last week of March in 2020, compared to that same week the year before.

This sudden and wide-spread shock to medicine was unlike anything we'd seen before.

When we usually have change in the US healthcare system, it's pretty slow, right?

We'll develop a new technology, we'll start using it and then we'll learn how that works

and we'll advance on that and slowly but surely maybe too slowly sometimes

we'll change how we provide care.

When the pandemic started, there wasn't time for healthcare providers and policymakers

to consider the implications of this technological shift.

And a team and others are still trying to figure it out.

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