A Doctor Remotely Told A Patient He Was Going To Die Using A Video-Link Robot (bbc.com)

dryriver quotes the BBC: A doctor in California told a patient he was going to die using a robot with a video-link screen. Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor — appearing on the robot's screen — informed him that he would die within a few days. A family friend wrote on social media that it was "not the way to show value and compassion to a patient". The hospital says it "regrets falling short" of the family's expectations.

Mr Quintana died the next day.

Comments

Doctor Joke #1

[PopeRatzo]

I went to the doctor and he examined me and ran a battery of tests. His video link robot came back into the room and said, "Mr Ratzo, you're crazy." I told him I wanted a second opinion and he said, "You're ugly, too."

But the video link robot did suggest that I start doing yoga. When I asked him why, he said, "So you can kiss your ass goodbye."

Re:Doctor Joke #1

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

A dying man smells his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies cooking downstairs. It takes all the strength he has left but he gets up from the bed and crawls down the stairs.

He sees the cookies cooling on the counter and staggers over to them. As he reaches for one, his wife's wrinkled hand reaches out, smacks his and she yells:

"No, you can't have those! They're for the funeral!"

Re:So, maybe not the best bedside manner

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Botside manner?

Pure clickbait story

[timholman]

This story is pure one-sided clickbait.

There's no way that this man, and his family, were not aware that his condition was critical. The doctor (who might have been hundreds of miles away) made the correct decision to inform the patient immediately of his prognosis.

Being there in person wouldn't have changed a thing. Quite the contrary - the patient very probably would have died waiting for the doctor to show up in person to tell him exactly what he and his family almost certainly already knew - that his life was about to end.

This is a story designed to make an insurance company look evil. There may be plenty of valid reasons to hate Kaiser Permanente, but this incident was not one of them. Note from the article: ""The evening video tele-visit was a follow-up to earlier physician visits." The family in fact did have previous personal consultations, where I'm sure they were told what to expect if the test results came out badly. The tele-visit was the doctor following up with them in as timely a manner as possible.