The Hawaii Medical Association (Hawaii’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance provider) has announced that starting next week, patients can start receiving doctor consults via web cam.
Yes, doctor visits via web cam.
At first blush, it sounds crazy. After all, doctors have to see and touch you in order to form a diagnosis, right? Well, that’s where lines get a little blurry. That’s because doctor’s receive a lot of phone calls from people who…more or less…are wanting to be diagnosed over the phone (without coming in for a visit). And doctor’s don’t get paid to communicate…they get paid for office visits and procedures.
In fact, some proponents of this new “treatment” method claim that doctor’s can take care of roughly 50% of people’s medical problems without face to face visits.
So now (in the case of the program being offered in Hawaii), for just a $10 co-pay you can skip scheduling appointments weeks in advance, skip the travel, skip the waiting room and consult with a doctor over video.
But here are my questions for you.
Would you “see” a doctor over video? Do you think this is a wise application (in a business sense) of web video? And if you work/have worked in the medical field, what are your thoughts on this new “telemedicine” approach to medical treatment?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Post your comments below.
From a business standpoint, I think this is a good use of online video. Lots of people have relatively minor problems and this could save tons of time and hassle. Hopefully, if more than a web video consultation is needed, the doctor could tell that. Hopefully.
At best, a web video consult should be thought of as a preliminary step in the health care process but I think it could work well in many instances.
A web video consult would be more complete than a phone consult and doctors have been doing that for years.
I probably could write pages about this question, as I am a health care provider–I have had a psychotherapy practice in California since 1979. Although similar, but not the same as a medical practice, as a profession, we have been facing this same question for the last few years, with no real acceptable resolution yet.
If my profession, which does not, indeed should not, touch their clients, cannot resolve this issue, then the medical community is never going find an acceptable landing spot because seeing and touching are so crucial to diagnosis. That said, here are but a few bullet points germane to the issue.
1. Licensing issues–i.e., it is conceivable that patient & doctor will not always be in the same state. Thus far, it has not yet been settled where the clinician would actually be practicing in a virtual situation. Would he/she be practicing where the patient is, or where the clinician is? Most professionals are not licensed outside their state/country.
2. Administrative issues–what it would take to verify the patient insurance coverage is not as simple or easy as you might think, which is a very expensive undertaking. In other words, setting up the system for virtual medical coverage is a nightmare, which means the cost/benefit ratio is no where as good as one might think. The point is, the coast off setting all this up will be passed on the patient. Not cheap.
3. Confidentiality issue–It’s much easier to bring a patient in to a room, shut the door, and discuss/examine privately with no doubt about the privacy. In a virtual situation, there is no control over who can/will can be watching on the health care provider end. That ‘s a huge issue. There’s also the problem of transmission interception.
4. Liability–Because there are countless ways to alter the patient’s presentation of their problem, any physician who “sees” a patient virtually, is asking for a lawsuit. Frankly, the lawyers would have a hey-day with virtual medical practice. Not only would there surely be provider malpractice suits, the insurance providers promoting it would also be liable.
So, that is just a few of the problems, in my opinion, that lurk throughout the notion of a virtual medical or psychology practice. On the surface, it sounds great. But in a litigious society, I do not see it working. Where it could possible work is in third world/undeveloped countries, where medical care is so lacking it possibly could work.
In the mean time here in the U.S., we are all probably better off leaving the practice in real time in real offices. BTW, there is a company here in Silicon Valley that has developed software that actually does allow for virtual physical palpation. But it has not yet been accepted by the AMA, as far as I know.
This could be a good idea but only for existing patients provided there are signed agreements between both parties. And, yes, confidentiality is an issue.