Aim Establishment of telemedicine for COVID-19 affected patients at home isolation in a secondary care hospital in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods While I was volunteering for the national telemedicine support for COVID-19 patients, a thoughtful implementation of the same in our hospital to help home isolated COVID-19 patients was made by our team. After seeking permission from the management, circulars were dispersed by means of hard copies and digital pamphlets to the employees’ homes. We trained doctors in standard operating protocol, ethics and legalities of telemedicine and COVID-19 home isolation guidelines. Apart from these periodic meetings held to address the problems, regular feedback from doctors and the patients noted, COVID-19 case audits conducted, a nodal officer assigned for liaising between the hospital, patients and for primary contact tracing. All the tele-consulted patients information documented were updated to the local government bodies.

Results The whole process nurtured young leaders in the unprecedented times aiding the leadership to break barriers and adapt to function efficiently. Telemedicine transformed the patient-doctor relationship helping to build good rapport, became an efficient way of treatment and the patients accepted telemedicine as it was safe for their families.

Conclusion A leader’s role in the healthcare system is to empower innovative solutions by fostering interaction and aiding quality patient care. We used the COVID-19 pandemic to transform a secondary care hospital into a more resilient system. Telemedicine was a ray of hope for distorted patients, challenged the perception of the existing practicing methods and skills. Telemedicine made counselling easier and helped to save many lives.