Steven Shook, MD

“Just [by] making sure we have patients’ imaging uploaded and all their records available through our electronic health record, you really can provide an excellent consultation for someone.”

In the last month, Cleveland Clinic has ramped up its telemedicine use, to the point that almost two-thirds of the care being provided is through virtual programs. Although its Neurological Institute has been utilizing this type of care for several years, this shift has allowed its physicians to perfect and tweak their tactics to offer patients as close to an in-person visit equivalent as possible.

As Steven Shook, MD, staff neurologist, Vice-Chair of Operations, and Quality Improvement Officer at 

 can attest, this care has included the management of patients with a number of conditions of neuromuscular nature.

To find out more about Shook’s experience thus far and how he and his colleagues have adjusted to this care model, 

inquired further about his involvement with virtual care. He detailed how the institute has relied on its past experience and how the physicians have used this to shape their process into what it currently looks like.

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The staff neurologist, Vice-Chair of Operations, and Quality Improvement Officer at Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute detailed his experience managing patients with various conditions through a telemedicine platform.

Steven Shook, MD: Managing Patients Via Telemedicine

“Historically, Cleveland Clinic as an enterprise has done less than 2% of its total care virtually. The Neurological Institute is probably closer to between 4% and 5%. We went from that to 75% or more of our care being provided virtually over the course of just a couple of weeks.”

In the last decade, the push from some in medicine toward using telemedicine and virtual care has been evident, with hopes of achieving a more robust model of care through supplemental virtual visits. This push for the use of telemedicine has been met with mostly positive reinforcement, though the progress of actually realizing its use has been rather lackluster across the board, as challenges with payment, insurance coverage, and reimbursement have presented roadblocks along the way.

Although, with the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the process of incorporating telemedicine into care has sped up drastically. In just a matter of weeks, institutions and hospital systems across the United States have set up care models to aid patients almost exclusively in a virtual fashion. For those at Cleveland Clinic, like Steven Shook, MD, it had been used previously, though the need for a larger influx of meetings with patients has required some creative use of a number of platforms.

, the staff neurologist, Vice Chair of Operations, and Quality Improvement Officer at 

 discusses the transition that has occurred at the institute, the various types of audio/visual platforms that they’ve utilized, as well as how this might impact the future use of telemedicine.

The staff neurologist, Vice-Chair of Operations, and Quality Improvement Officer at Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute discussed the institute’s transition to telemedicine and how it has been utilized.

Author | Steven Shook, MD

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