In the teeth of a terrible pandemic, millions of Americans, both patients and healthcare providers, for the first time plunged into telemedicine.

Initially, skepticism abounded on both sides of the screen. Necessity — the strong desire to not get infected with COVID-19 — was as usual the mother of invention. But physicians and patients alike really doubted whether looking at and talking to each other through a computer screen — or even a phone! — could have anything like as good an outcome as an in-person visit could provide.

But anecdotal evidence — and some early studies — over the 23 months since state medical boards across the nation dramatically loosened regulations on telehealth shows that Americans who have visited healthcare providers virtually have overcome their skepticism.

They have met telemedicine, and they have decided it is good.

Now the nation must take advantage of a success forged in a deadly and tragic time and make sure that telemedicine is not allowed to slip away as we begin to come out of the pandemic.

Many states have generally relaxed all kinds of rules in order to allow for more video and telephone meetings with physicians and other providers. But many have also made that contingent on a medical state of emergency being in place.

Every effort should be made to see telemedicine not go away — and even be expanded — after the medical emergency is over.

Meanwhile, states should accept out-of-state providers rather than requiring that physicians practicing telehealth be licensed to practice medicine in the state where the patient resides.

We understand the initial skepticism. But in this trial by fire, there have been a lot of converts. One patient converted to telehealth happens to be a retired M.D. himself. “I wasn’t sure how it would work,” Dr. Ben Forsyth, 87, told The New York Times after his personal physician suggested a video meeting for a checkup. “Would I feel listened to? Would she be able to elicit information to help with my care?”

But he’s had four more video appointments with his doctor since. “He consulted her remotely when he wintered in Florida; he has also seen his cardiologist and his sleep specialist through telehealth,” the Times reports.

There will always be medical visits that are impossible to manage virtually. Emergency rooms are in no danger of being shuttered; you can’t fix a broken leg digitally. But physicians are reporting that there are actual medical advantages to seeing patients in their home environment — one realized her elderly patient was depressed when the house plants he used to brag about watering were dying on the vine on the shelf behind his laptop’s camera.

— Tribune News Service