Telemedicine – The Greatest Invention Since Sliced Bread

Did you lot know that you lot are a “telemedicine provider”? No? I can’t blame you lot for non knowing, but you lot are, in addition to ever receive got been. Well, peradventure non always, but for sure since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Better yet, you lot supply gratuitous telemedicine services. Here is an idea: on the abode page of your exercise website, you lot should add together a large huge flashing banner maxim “Free Telemedicine Services!” Still hesitating because you lot are non using fancy monitors when you lot accept calls from patients? First, telemedicine does non necessarily imply multimedia, but if you lot desire to last sure, merely plow on FaceTime on your iPhone in addition to enquire your patient to produce the same. Much better… Look at you lot now, providing the latest in addition to greatest telemedicine service similar a pro, for free.

But expect a minute; didn’t the largest individual insurer inwards the solid soil merely denote that it volition laid out paying for telemedicine services? Yes in addition to no. UnitedHealthcare volition pay for telemedicine encounters provided through a handful of telemedicine companies that are privately owned in addition to venture upper-case missive of the alphabet backed corporations. UnitedHealthcare volition last paying you lot squat for taking calls from your ain patients, fifty-fifty if you lot produce it on your spiffy iPhone 6, in addition to fifty-fifty if you lot plow FaceTime on. However, if you lot sign upward amongst Doctor On Demand, or American Well, to supply clinical advice on the iPhone to consummate strangers, in addition to fork over a portion of the proceeds to the corporation, UnitedHealthcare volition pay you lot equally well. 

This may last the virtually wonderful incentive for physicians to toss whatever remaining continuity of tending considerations out the window. After all, why should you lot pass all your days seeing 1 distraught patient afterwards another, amongst or without “good” insurance, who may demo upward or may not, in addition to who may pay you lot for your service or may not, when you lot tin merely sit down inwards your office, in addition to shoot the breeze amongst perfectly salubrious people, each getting exactly xv minutes appear upward time, afterwards they swipe their credit carte du jour to ensure that you lot larn paid for every 2nd of that time? Perhaps it would last wise for you lot to cutting your regular panel down, larn rid of those patients who problem you lot the most, permit the others consider your assistant, in addition to exercise in-person medicine equally a hobby, to maintain your skills upward in addition to to add together a little diverseness to your novel electronic career.

In its announcement UnitedHealthcare cites the mythical 45,000 physician shortage, peculiarly inwards rural areas, equally the impetus for providing telemedicine services to its members. Having board certified in addition to experienced physicians cater to a constant flow of colds, sinus infections, allergies in addition to breadbasket aches, all of which are recommended to last delegated to non-physicians working at the “top of their license” inwards traditional practice, is somehow supposed to alleviate this shortage. Providing a agency for urban in addition to out of province physicians to compete amongst solid soil docs, for credit-card carrying worried-well, is envisioned to improve the disparities inwards access to lineament medical tending inwards rural America.

Why in addition to then is UnitedHealthcare (and other individual insurers equally well), encouraging farther fragmentation of primary tending in addition to massive waste matter of physician time? “The toll of a video-based virtual see is less than $50 in addition to provides meaning savings when compared to costs for similar tiddler medical needs treated at a doctor’s component ($80), urgent tending facility ($160) or emergency room ($650)”. And that’s all the myopic reasoning nosotros need. Getting $50 for an tardily xv minutes (or less) session in addition to subtracting the corporate share, a physician may halt upward amongst approximately $140 per hr in addition to no overhead. It’s pretty skillful if you lot are moonlighting, but less thence if you lot sit down inwards your fully staffed component picayune amongst your iPhone inwards the middle of the day. If you lot produce this type of run total time, which is pretty much what people produce inwards retail clinics, or call-a-nurse type of services, produce you lot all the same consider yourself a doctor? Just wondering……

That may shortly last a moot inquiry though, because the “Texas Medical Board (TMB) is trying to position a small-scale stake inwards the the world past times ruling that physicians tin alone supply telemedicine services to patients amongst whom they receive got a preexisting in-person relationship, or if some other clinician is introduce at the patient’s location. This dominion permits basically all modalities of useful telemedicine services, except the “one-and-done” type of remote encounter, where a tiddler ailment is diagnosed based on hearsay and, virtually importantly, antibiotics are diligently prescribed. I did non consider whatever massive back upward for the TMB from physician organizations. Instead the TMB was slapped amongst a lawsuit from Teladoc, a telemedicine service provider, getting laid to larn public in addition to disputation that past times enforcing a touchstone of care, the medical board is interfering amongst Teladoc’s God-given correct to brand lots of money.

Telemedicine, you lot see, is the greatest excogitation since sliced bread, in addition to it is going to produce for America’s wellness exactly what its predecessor did. You don’t require to last a “futurist” to consider where this is going. The TMB volition virtually probable lose its illustration inwards courts stacked amongst corporate lackeys. Next, the unregulated interstate commerce inwards telemedicine volition farther accelerate the exodus of physicians (and hospitals) from rural in addition to working-class areas, which is a skillful affair for telemedicine vendors. Finally, the best paid middle course of pedagogy profession volition last “globalized” to places where “doctors” run for less than American minimum wages, in addition to nosotros volition all last conditioned to crave in addition to swallow deadly amounts of convenient in addition to nearly gratuitous iPhone medicine.

You may last tempted to blame the public for its request for cheapness in addition to convenience, or for its inability to value a human relationship amongst a trusted physician. You may last increasingly frustrated past times the starstruck media in addition to its unquestioning worship of all things originating from Silicon Valley, in addition to you lot may last disheartened past times corrupt authorities acting on behalf of billionaire thugs to swindle the populace. But where are our doctors? Not the offshore avatars, in addition to non the ones submitting themselves to $40 peepshow sessions, but the overwhelming bulk of American physicians, all the same anchored inwards their communities in addition to all the same practicing ethical medicine, 1 patient at a time. Where are you lot guys?