Confronting hidden COVID-19 burden: a telemedical solution for elective urological outpatient clinics

Maintaining high-quality care for urological patients is a challenge during and after the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We observe an increasing volume of postponed elective visits at our tertiary care hospital, holding the risk for deterioration of non-emergency disease conditions. As it is unclear for how long the pandemic will last, we propose to implement telehealth as a solution to provide regular symptom monitoring compatible with social distancing guidelines during the pandemic and beyond. Telemedical assessment and prioritizing of high-risk patients for individual consults at outpatient services will have to be aligned with available outpatient capacity and local outbreak severity. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s15010-020-01511-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.