Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Hancock’s ‘Zoom medicine’ take off?

Leon Neal/Getty Images

It’s not unusual that the left and right hands of government don’t know what the other is doing: despite being based in the same postcode, different departments are notoriously bad at communicating. They even stop speaking to one another occasionally, with secretaries of state blocking new policies at what is known as the ‘write-round’ stage of policy development. This is where ministers consult colleagues across government on a policy, which others can then block. Sometimes departments have such a strong objection to a policy in another ministry that they refuse to sign off anything else through write-rounds until this plan is dropped. But this polite form of hostage-taking is far less common than the practice of announcing something without thinking about whether it makes any sense in the wider context of what the government is doing.

With that in mind, it’s worth asking whether Matt Hancock thought through his call for doctors to switch to ‘Zoom medicine’ in the context of what the government wants to do with healthcare. In a speech to the Royal College of Physicians last week, he announced that ‘from now on, all consultations should be teleconsultations unless there’s a compelling clinical reason not to’. He argued:

‘Of course, if there’s an emergency, the NHS will be ready and waiting to see you in person – just as it always has been. But if they are able to patients should get in contact first – via the web or by calling in advance. That way, care is easier to manage and the NHS can deliver a much better service. Not only will it make life quicker and easier for patients. But free up clinicians to concentrate on what really matters.’

The pandemic may have shown us that there are passable ways of staying in touch when it is forbidden to meet in person, but it has not dramatically changed the ways in which humans have evolved to communicate

It’s a compelling case, isn’t it? Who’d choose sitting in a busy waiting room for half an hour over staying at home until the doctor is ready to see you on Zoom? Hancock even pointed out that people previously thought to struggle with technology have started to use it during the pandemic to stay in touch with their families, and so the view ‘that anyone over the age of 25 simply could not cope with anything other than a face-to-face appointment’ no longer applied.

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