This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.

In February 2020, the month before Covid-19 hit Boston, Partners Healthcare, the huge health system that includes Massachusetts General Hospital, treated 1,600 patients via video visits. By April, the number of patients seeking care through Partners’ video service had swelled to 242,000.

“We’re not the only ones,” said Joe Kvedar, a dermatology professor at Harvard Medical School and a telemedicine advocate at Partners for three decades, in a May webinar. The same thing was happening across the country as the Covid-19 pandemic made in-person visits at doctors’ offices dangerous for patients and clinicians alike.

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