Coronavirus: Family physicians provide telehealth care at risk of bankruptcy

While Emergency Departments, hospitals, and intensive care units are in the headlines for their battles against the growing wave of COVID-19 infections, a quieter, but just as dire, struggle unfolds in primary care offices all over the country. Primary care clinicians have been asked to keep our patients safe from COVID-19, screen them, tell them what medicines to use, when to stay home and when to go to the ER. And we are trying to maintain personalized delivery of acute, chronic and preventive services for all our patients. Everyone has been asked to practice social distancing, but we are trying to use our ongoing patient relationships to enable physical distancing with social connectedness.