Flexible access? Digitalisation of Danish healthcare through video consultations

This chapter brings attention to the political ideal of ‘flexible access’ to healthcare services. We situate flexibility in the context of a welfare state seeking to achieve efficiency and self-service by means of digitalisation and aim to provide empirical answers to how flexible access unfolds and is experienced in practice. Through ethnographic studies of video consultations in hospital outpatient clinics, we show how the flexibility of location offered by the video consultation creates different freedoms and conveniences for patients. However, values other than flexible access figure in patients’ preferences for their interactions with clinicians. Furthermore, achieving flexible access requires specific equipment, skills, and adaptability, and sometimes a need for assistance to obtain access. With the current push for virtual consultations and treatment in the home, these empirical insights contribute important knowledge about potential benefits, as well as obstacles and tensions that arise in the move to digital healthcare services.