My Pediatrician Is Virtual: I’ve Never Met My Kid’s Main Doctor In Person — Is This Normal?
It’s 2:17 a.m. I’m sitting on the edge of my four-year-old’s twin bed, the sheets still warm from where he’d been thrashing around complaining his arm itches. The dog’s curled at my feet, snoring, and the half-empty mug of mint tea I made at 11 p.m. is sweating on the nightstand. I fumble for my phone, open the patient portal, and tap “urgent on-demand visit.” Ten minutes later, Dr. Lee’s face pops up on my screen. She’s in scrub pants, her hair pulled back, a mug of her own sitting off to the side of her desk. I’ve never met her in person.
We moved cross-country last year for my husband’s job, and by the time we got settled, every in-network pediatric practice within a 25-minute drive was closed to new patients. The shortest wait list for an opening was 18 months. A fellow mom from the playground recommended the virtual primary care practice she uses for her three kids, so I signed us up on a lark, figuring it would be a temporary fix. That was 14 months ago, and Dr. Lee is still our main pediatrician.
That night, she asked me to turn on the overhead light and have Jax hold his arm out to the camera. He was half-asleep, rubbing his eyes, so she asked him what T-Rex he’d been playing with that day, got him grinning, and leaned in to look at the rash wrapping around the spider bite he’d gotten at the park two days before. It’s just an allergic reaction to the bite, she said, told me to slather on 1% hydrocortisone twice a day, use a cool compress if the itching keeps him up, and listed three specific red flags to call back about, even if it was 4 a.m. No waiting a week for an appointment, no sitting in a germ-filled urgent care waiting room for two hours with a sleepy, itchy kid. We went back to bed, the rash cleared in three days.
I mentioned the incident to a different mom at the playground a week later, and she stopped mid-sip of her iced coffee and stared. “You’ve never met her in person? How does she know your kids? What about well checks and vaccines?” It’s a question I get all the time. The answer is pretty simple: the practice partners with the community clinic five minutes from my house for any in-person work. When the kids need their annual well check, vaccines, or blood work, I book a 20-minute appointment with a nurse at the clinic, she does all the vitals, shots, and any tests, and uploads all the data to Dr. Lee that same day. We do the full consult over video the next afternoon, when I’ve got the kids fed and I can sit down and actually ask all my questions, instead of rushing through a 10-minute in-person slot while the doctor checks their pager every two minutes.
Last fall, my seven-year-old, Sam, started having recurring stomach aches before soccer practice. We went to a walk-in in-person clinic once, and the doctor there glanced at him, said it was just nerves, and sent us home. The aches kept coming. Dr. Lee had me do one specific thing: jot down everything Sam ate for three days, note what time the pain started, and how he was feeling that day. When I sent her the notes and photos of his typical snacks, she noticed he was drinking 12 ounces of apple juice before every practice, and the pain hit 20 minutes in. She did a video visit with Sam, asked him what he was nervous about with the new travel team, and it turned out he was worried he’d be the worst player on the field. We cut the apple juice (it was triggering mild acid reflux) and added a five-minute chat in the car on the way to practice where he can name one thing he’s worried about before we get there. The stomach aches stopped after a week. She remembered Sam loved dinosaurs six months later, when she answered a random question he had about growing pains via a 60-second voice note. I can’t even get my old in-person doctor to return a call in 24 hours, let alone remember a seven-year-old’s favorite hobby.
It’s not for everyone, obviously. If you have a kid with a complex chronic condition, you probably need an in-person provider you can see regularly. But for most healthy kids, it works a lot better than people think. If you’re stuck on a wait list or considering virtual care, the three things I tell people to check first are: First, confirm the practice has a formal partnership with a local clinic that can do in-person labs, vaccines, and urgent checks when you need them. Don’t use a random app that just has on-call doctors with no connection to local care. Second, ask how after-hours care works before you sign up. My practice promises a provider will connect with you within 30 minutes for urgent issues after hours, no exceptions. That’s non-negotiable for me. Third, keep a running note in your phone with any symptoms, questions, or vitals between visits. It’s easy to forget what you wanted to ask when you get on the call, and since you don’t pop in for regular in-person visits, keeping your own quick log makes every visit more useful.
We’re still on that 18-month wait list for an in-network in-person pediatrician. We’ve got about six more months to go before a spot opens up, if it even does. There are things that are awkward, sometimes. Once I couldn’t get Jax to hold still long enough for Dr. Lee to look at his ear, so I had to drive him to the clinic anyway, which was a hassle. I get why people prefer in-person care, and I get the side-eye when I tell people we see a virtual doctor. But right now, this works. Dr. Lee knows both my kids, remembers their allergies and their favorite toys, answers my random questions about rashes or sleep disruptions within a few hours, and we don’t have to take half a day off work or pull the other kid out of school to sit in a waiting room for an hour. I don’t know if this is the new normal for pediatric care, or just a temporary band-aid for a strained primary care system. But I can’t be the only one doing this, right?
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