IBPS PO 2024 · Question 207 of 260

Directions (98-102): Read the following passage and answer the given questions. Telemedicine, the practice of consulting physicians through video calls, phone lines, or messaging apps rather than in a clinic, has moved from a niche convenience to a mainstream feature of healthcare delivery within the span of a single decade. Its proliferation across both metropolitan hospitals and rural health centres has been driven by a simple promise: that distance and time should no longer determine whether a patient receives timely medical attention. For families living hours away from the nearest specialist, a fifteen-minute video consultation can replace what was once a full day of travel, lost wages, and uncertain waiting-room queues. Yet the very convenience that makes telemedicine attractive to patients also introduces constraints that traditional, face-to-face consultations do not carry. A physician examining a patient in person can observe posture, smell, skin tone, and subtle tremors that a grainy video feed often fails to capture, and can perform a physical palpation that no camera can replicate. Consequently, while telemedicine excels at follow-up visits, prescription renewals, and preliminary triage, it remains a poor substitute for conditions that demand hands-on examination, such as suspected fractures or abdominal pain of unclear origin. This tension between accessibility and diagnostic depth places telemedicine in an unusual position: it simultaneously widens the reach of healthcare and narrows the range of ailments that can be safely treated through a screen. Hospital administrators who once viewed the technology purely as a cost-saving tool are now compelled to stratify cases carefully, routing only appropriate complaints to virtual queues while reserving in-person slots for anything requiring direct examination. A further complication lies in the unevenness of digital access itself. Elderly patients unfamiliar with smartphone applications, and households in regions with unreliable internet connectivity, often find the supposed convenience of telemedicine transformed into an additional barrier rather than a bridge. Clinics that fail to offer a simple phone- call fallback risk excluding precisely the population that stood to benefit most from reduced travel. Ultimately, telemedicine's promise will be fulfilled not by replacing physical clinics but by working alongside them, absorbing the routine and the urgent-but-simple cases so that scarce specialist time can be devoted to what a screen still cannot diagnose. Choose the most suitable synonym of 'proliferation' as used in the passage. Directions (103-108): In the following passage there are blanks, each of which has been denoted by letters. For each blank, three words are suggested, one, two or all three of which may fit the blank appropriately. Following the words, five options are given. Choose the most appropriate set of words from the options that fits the blank appropriately. Over the past few years, many organisations have (A) [I. rejected II. embraced III. adopted] remote work as a permanent feature of their operating model rather than a temporary arrangement. Surveys conducted across several sectors (B) [I. indicates II. suggesting III. indicate] that employees who work remotely report higher job satisfaction, although managers remain (C) [I. skeptical II. skepticism III. doubtful] about long-term productivity. Firms that (D) [I. invests II. invest III. investing] in collaborative software and transparent communication tend to retain talent better than those that simply (E) [I. mandates II. mandating III. mandate] a return to the office without addressing employee concerns. As hybrid arrangements become standard, human resource teams must (F) [I. reconsidering II. reconsidered III. reconsider] traditional performance metrics, shifting emphasis from hours logged to outcomes achieved.

Reading comprehension

1. AexpansionCorrect
2. Bdecline
3. Cstagnation
4. Drestriction
5. Euniformity