Doctor’s visits via Web cam get thumbs up

In a pilot study at Massachusetts General Hospital, 30 patients who had come to see their primary care physician for routine follow-up or acute care agreed to first have a visit via a computer equipped with a Web camera. Their physician sat in another room to conduct the visit. After patients and the doctor completed questionnaires about the virtual visit, they met face to face and went through a second visit with a hands-on physical examination. While the patients liked the face-to-face doctors' appointments better, the videoconference visits were almost as popular.