If the questions and discussion you have are hampered by what the parent commenter (and family in the article) describes as a shitty Skype connection, that may

If the questions and discussion you have are hampered by what the parent commenter (and family in the article) describes as a shitty Skype connection, that may more than make up for the time purportedly saved by doing the talk remotely. It's possible/likely that better technology will make this kind of remote interaction much more palatable and useful. But it's obvious that that better technology is not quite here, and yet the hospital seems to have OKed it, as if they were doing internal beta testing an experimental feature.