Wednesday morning at the “Herbstsonne” senior center in Dresden. Resident care manager Marc Ulbricht is on his way with family physician Antonio Kantchew-Haustein. The Dresden-based general practitioner is scheduled to check on Irene Weise. The 80-year-old is waiting for the doctor in her wheelchair. Since suffering a stroke, the left side of her body has been paralyzed—a bruise has formed on her arm because the backrest of her wheelchair often gets in the way, she explains. “Show me that little sore spot,” says the 49-year-old doctor. He prescribes an ointment for the woman.
So far, it seems like a perfectly normal house call—but Kantchew-Haustein isn’t actually in the room. To his patient, he appears only as a face on a tablet that Ulbricht has placed in front of her. Irene Weise finds it rather unusual not to be sitting face-to-face with her doctor. “But this works just fine, too.”
Next visit: Lutz Kiesewalter, 64, had to have his big toe amputated. Ulbricht uses the tablet as a camera. The doctor, joining the call remotely, examines the wound and decides how many stitches should be removed for now. This has become routine for the nursing home.
