Beginning to take off after insurances start paying for it.
Related posts:
- Acute visits pay better
- Using Wikipedia for online health information, my USA Today column
- Drug-coated stents
- Support balance billing; How doctors lose money; Finding rural doctors; Online medicine thriving
- Breaking even on 4 visits per day
- Needless ER visits
- A woman visits her own heart
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Not a good idea.
There is no substitute for a face-to-face encounter, period.
Any insurance company jumping on board with reimbursing for on line visits is doing it for one reason only: they think it is going to save them money.
Just like radiologists endorsing teleradiology, any doctor endorsing online visits will eventually be replaced by a cheaper, but licensed, doctor oversees.
If the insurance companies are so interested in access and convenience, why don’t they reimburse telephone calls?
By the way, there is a role for online consultations, but only in remote areas, i.e. Alaska, where true access is not possible.
Over the years, I’ve heard others curse the first doctor who decided to accept HMO payments; afterall, if that doctor said no, the movement would have died. But because that doctor started, all the others had to follow suit and where are we today?
Therefore, I implore you-DON’T START! As the great philosopher Nacy Reagan said, “Just say no!”
Underpaid in New York
Seems like a good marketing device for plans looking to attract younger, smarter working folks.
It seems like there are big chunks of the retired population whose main entertainment is going to the doctor. Why would they change their ways?
It’s people with something else to do, like work, who would benefit from not fighting traffic for a follow-on or routine visit.
102 fever, went online, filled out a form, and was diagnosed with a “bacterial infection?” Just what bacterial infection was diagnosed with confidence with no physical exam? Maybe sinusitis, but that’s it.
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