Balancing Virtual Pulmonary Rehab's Promise with its Pitfalls

The advent of virtual care offers exciting new possibilities for expanding healthcare access. While this is a net positive for patients and providers, healthcare experts are warning that in some cases, virtual care may not be able to offer the gold standard of medicine, while curbing access to needed in-person care.Virtual pulmonary rehabilitation is one such case. Though health systems are increasingly collaborating with virtual-first pulmonary rehab providers, experts in the field have cautioned against a no-holds-barred approach to replacing in-person pulmonary rehab with virtual programs.However, the cost of running center-based programs is proving too high, and many health systems are forced to limit or close those programs. In these cases, virtual pulmonary rehab is preferable to no rehab option for pulmonary disease patients. Still, health systems must carefully vet and continually assess the virtual pulmonary rehab model they choose to implement.