Patients with documented or observable significant cognitive barriers, hearing, or speech impairment. Examples include a patient who is not alert or oriented, who is unable to sign his or her own surgical consent due to cognitive issues or who cannot understand and repeat back to study coordinator reason for study. If these barriers will not be an issue for a video phone call and can be reasonably accommodated, we will do so. However, our telemedicine technology is still very basic, and these patients may be more comfortable communicating with providers and expressing their needs during an in-person visit
Surgery 3 days or less away from clinic visit. As in-person assessment is the gold standard, we need to allow some time in case a patient cannot work the technology for a telemedicine visit or an issue comes up where visit needs to be converted to in-person.
Out of state patients as there are currently medical licensing concerns with conducting telemedicine on patients physically located out of state during the visit.
Determined to be ineligible for surgery during evaluation
