Virtual appointments—embracing the opportunity to reduce carbon emissions mustn’t widen health inequalities

The NHS turns 75 this year, but with this birthday milestone comes an urgent need to tackle several considerable, co-occurring challenges in healthcare delivery, climate change, and health inequalities. Scaling innovations can provide solutions to multiple problems and should be an essential part of our NHS recovery plan. Yet we must also ensure that the steps we take to make progress in one area don’t inadvertently worsen conditions in another. Nowhere is this tension more evident than in the use of virtual appointments.Covid-19 accelerated the routine use of virtual appointments and now these remote services have been woven into the post-pandemic landscape of how the NHS operates.1 Virtual appointments have been lauded for helping the NHS to reduce its carbon footprint. Yet some commentators have raised concerns about the quality of care that can be delivered virtually, and it has been suggested that using remote services will further widen health…
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