Tell-a-Doc

These docs are literally on call | USA Today | 5.25.05

A group of entrepreneurs is gambling that patients are willing to pay for fast, low-cost medical care — by telephone, with doctors they’ve never met.

The controversial new business, a twist on the decades-old practice of doctors responding to phone calls from their own patients, is aimed at two modern issues: demanding, time-crunched people; and those who lack health insurance.

The service’s promoters say patients, both the insured and the uninsured, can save money by using TelaDoc instead of urgent care clinics or the emergency room. For individuals, the service costs $18 to join, and $4.25 a month. Each call to a doctor is $35.

TelaDoc might simply be the latest offering in what some see as a new health care niche: convenience.

On one end of the convenience spectrum are “concierge” practices for patients willing to pay sometimes steep stipends to their doctors to guarantee 24-hour access, quick return calls and other perks. On the other, “nurse-in-a-box” miniclinics in retail outlets offer a menu of low-cost tests with no-appointment-necessary speed. …

TelaDoc

{assorted snips from the Teladoc site}

Telephone Medical Consults: a Form of Telemedicine

Telephone medical consults is the art and science of providing standard medical assessments, treatments, care and services to patients located remotely from the treating physician. TelaDoc specializes in non-emergent (non-emergency), non-interventional primary care, thereby eliminating unnecessary and inefficient trips to a doctor or emergency room.

Telephone consults have been broadly utilized since 1997. Over 36 million Americans have been treated using this technology, and data from the University of Texas shows that over 70-75% of non-urgent primary care requests can be treated by a doctor with a telephone medical consult.

About Our Doctors

• Internists, family practitioners and urgent care doctors with years of experience
• Specialize in talking to patients and diagnosing problems over the phone
• All board eligible, most board certified
• Average hundreds of consults per week
• Must pass a rigorous background check that verifies the absence of any medical malpractice claims, checks references, and confirms the status of each doctor’s license
• Live and work in the United States
• English speaking doctors available in all states. Spanish interpreter available.

Services Provided

FAQs

• What is the TelaDoc service?
• Can members get prescriptions filled from TelaDoc physicians?
• Do patients talk to “real doctors”?
• How is the diagnosis performed?
• What are the qualifications of TelaDoc physicians?
• What are the costs associated with TelaDoc?

Board Eligible: These physicians have attained required education and certification to practice medicine in their respective states.

First, an interesting and parochial definition for “board eligible.” Is it purposefully meant to be vague? Board eligible means that a physician has completed a specialty residency and has not yet taken or passed his/her boards. By their definition, board eligible is anyone who has completed medical “education” (medical school and has a degree) and is licensed in a state. That is a world of difference!

Second, the practice of medicine is regulated at the state level under the state’s inherent police powers (health and welfare). It is wholly unexplained how a good faith basis for diagnosis and treatment is provided when there is no physical evaluation (even by proxy evaluation, e.g., paramedic or mid-level). Are they assigning the client (patient), calling in, to a physician licensed in the state the client is calling from? How is this any different from a physician practicing over the internet, instead of telephonically.

Third, state licensure, state discipline, state regulation, and what about malpractice (and in particular, what state to bring an action in) all glossed over. But then this is just an advertising piece…