Telemedicine has been the alternative that many people have chosen to pursue healthcare without giving up confinement. According to a report by Sinch, a cloud computing company, 38% of individuals used online counseling during the health crisis. According to the survey conducted in more than 40 countries, with 2,800 participants, Brazil appears third in the percentage of adherence to the method, at 43%, behind the United States (48%) and India (65%). ).
Photo: DINO / DINO
In light of the widespread commitment to telemedicine, the federal government, which passed Law No. 13989 in April 2020 authorizing the practice during the health crisis, approved in November 2021 an appendix allowing the regulation of this method after the pandemic period has passed. CFM (Federal Council of Medicine).
“This practice has gained so much support from Brazilians that it has raised a new problem: digital queues,” says Caio Abi Hila, former professor at UFRJ and founder of SOS Saúde em Casa, a company that works with agile solutions in telemedicine. In fact, according to O Globo newspaper, the demand for telemedicine has soared, and the waiting list for users of health plans has already reached 24 hours.
In a country where, according to the study “Medical Demography in Brazil 2020” – conducted by the USP (University of São Paulo) in partnership with the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine) – the ratio of doctors per thousand inhabitants is 2.4, higher than Japan and close to indicators of strength as the states In the United States (2.6), Canada (2.7) and the United Kingdom (2.8), it is clear that the waiting list is not due to a shortage of doctors, with noise in the relationship between supply and demand being the most likely cause of this problem.
“We have enough doctors to serve the Brazilian people, and the problem is with distribution,” says Mauro Ribeiro, President of the Council of Foreign Ministers, noting that there are people who need medical care, but to no avail, while on the other hand, there are doctors who have the availability and interest in providing Its services to more people.
For Abi Hila, lower digital care costs and flexibility of payment methods have made private telemedicine competitive even with respect to SUS. The doctor asserts that “the costs of the whole process of waiting days to weeks for psychiatric consultation, for example, are immeasurable.”
Innovation is the way out
In Abi Hila’s point of view, the queue in telemedicine services in Brazil can be explained: “Operations were made by copying the services face-to-face, their vices and problems – among them the regulation that leads to huge queues.” “Access to digital health is an entirely new activity, and it does not deserve to suffer from old vision, let alone be polluted by old problems,” he adds.
The specialist believes that investing in innovation is the way out of the current telemedicine waiting list. “Solving a large part of the problems of the twenty-first century involves technology, and with telemedicine this will not happen otherwise. Unlike what is being done now, which is copying care face-to-face and transferring it to digital, innovation is to find new solutions.”
For the physician, it is possible to reduce patient care waiting time by adopting platforms that, among other things, automatically transfer care to virtual communities of certified physicians.
SOS founder Saúde em Casa points out that “there is virtually no possibility that a qualified physician, with virtual access, will be available for virtual care for those who need it now.”
“And when we move to specialties, where the demand is more specific, and therefore more specialized, the opportunity is less,” he says. “By digital communications and automating these processes we can continue to make the match between supply and demand more efficient. Even if a patient in this model has to wait a few minutes, everyone in the system knows they are working at maximum optimization. Not waiting was due to inefficiency. “.
The expert asserts that “there is no pain, affliction, or fear worth waiting for. The pain that harms humans the most is the pain we feel at the moment. It makes no sense in terms of priority, in the age in which we live, a digital connection, to delay getting a doctor more than Pizza or a van. 21st century technologies should work for it.”
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