Between 300,000 to 500,000 trips could be avoided thanks to telemedicine, according to a survey by the Paris Region Institute.
The Covid-19 epidemic is pushing us to consider our travels differently. Teleworking makes it possible to avoid a good part of it, but how to do for urgent appointments, such as those with a doctor? Telemedicine could be a solution. The Paris Region Institute estimates that 5% of trips in Ile-de-France are linked to a medical reason, or 2 million trips.
More than a million teleconsultations per week at the end of April
“While the influence of teleworking and teleshopping on travel has already been the subject of numerous studiesexplains Dany Nguyen-Luong, Director of the Mobility and Transport Department of the Paris Region Institute, other activities practiced remotely, such as telemedicine and tele-education, which also experienced an explosion during the eight weeks of confinement, are, for the moment, little documented in the field of urban planning and transport.” This observation motivated this study. Before confinement, there were an average of 10,000 teleconsultations per week. During the last week of April, that figure topped one million, a 100-fold increase.”These simple figures predict the potential for a significant reduction in travel for health reasons if the massive practice of teleconsultation were to continue”he points out.
According to this mobility specialist, this trend should be confirmed in the coming months in Ile-de-France: “15 to 25% of physical consultations could switch to teleconsultation and telecare. This would result overall in a drop in daily trips for health reasons between 300,000 and 500,000 trips, or around 1% of all trips in normal times. Generally, these local trips are made by car: in the outer suburbs, 60% of health trips are made by car and a third in the inner suburbs. For Dany Nguyen-Luong, this “will contribute to the reduction of CO emissions2.”
Facilitation of telemedicine
Since September 2018, teleconsultation has been covered by Health Insurance under two conditions: if it takes place with the attending physician or if it follows an initial physical consultation. At the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, this measure was removed, and since March 18, third-party payment has been applied to this mode of consultation, which avoids the patient having to advance the costs.
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