Aiming to better serve our rural populations

摘要

This month’s article, “Evaluating the distance travelled for urological pediatric appointments,” highlights one of the difficulties of subspecialty practice in Canada. A limited number of pediatric urologists must serve the entire geographic breadth of the country, and this creates challenges. Our 2011 paper noted the significant costs and burden to the travelling family; we have been using telehealth to minimize some of this burden. Although never perfect, I find it very effective for obviously non-surgical conditions (e.g., incontinence, urinary tract infection, antenatal hydronephrosis). We estimated a median savings of $500–700 per patient.