We’ve mentioned before that in working on this blog we’ve come across a medical specialist, (who we will call Dr AAA,) highly rated in ratings on the internet, who quite happily and really promptly provides advices in response to questions emailed to him, (sometimes at 5.30 in the morning,) – something that wasn’t technically possible even 25 years ago.
(By the way, Dr AAA refuses to take payment for his advices and says that he never will!!!??? – which we think is madness, but is a quite separate matter.)
Of course, dealing with him in this way, as we have on 4 or 5 occasions, has certain HUGE advantages:-
- We can email our questions to him at our convenience.
- He can reply at his convenience.
- We get his advices in writing, so we can get second opinions on what he has to say, file his advices for later reference and so on and so on.
So is this sort of thing going to “catch on?” – without the doing it for free, of course.
The potential is there for more and consultations to be conducted in this way, (of course doctors carrying out procedures and carrying out some sorts of tests and diagnoses wouldn’t be affected in any way,) and for more and more doctors to be earning part of their incomes in this way, perhaps some would even be doing it full time.
But our impression is that certain sections of the medical profession will fight this sort of thing tooth and nail, they will want things to continue as they have for hundreds of years, that doctors only provide face to face consultations, and that doctors who don’t continue with this way will be victimised in some way. (It’s for this reason that we won’t be revealing Dr AAA’s identity.)
We believe that their reason for doing this is that they don’t want their advices to be scrutinised, because lots of their advices are mediocre, to say the least – advices that are provided in writing rather than in face to face consultations are going to be of a much higher standard.
It will be interesting to see how things develop.