Physicians at Southern California’s nonprofit Venice Family Clinic never envisioned caring for most of their patients via telephone—until the pandemic.
When office visits dwindled last spring during local stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), clinic staff had to make an abrupt shift. Soon, 75% of appointments were being handled by telephone. But none of them used video call apps such as FaceTime, WhatsApp, or Google Duo. These were old-fashioned audio-only calls.