Screening for Obesity in Children and Adolescents: US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement

Are Virtual Visits Here to Stay? The nation's largest health insurer (UnitedHealth Group) has created a division that will be offering a service that connects patients to doctors using video chat through their home computers. According to an article in The New York Times (Miller CC, December 21, 2009), the program will be introduced state by state starting in Texas with the goal of providing a less expensive method of routine care. Critics of this approach believe that quality will suffer without the intimacy of an in-person visit and the opportunity to do a physical exam. If same-day access to a primary care physician is difficult in some parts of this country, not to mention long emergency room waits, then the virtual visit may be a viable alternative—although whether accurate high quality diagnoses and doctor-patient interactions can be made through this technique remains to be seen. Valid and reliable outcome studies have yet to be published.

Noted by JFL, MD