Need medical advice? Call a doctor instead of your mom. | Oscar Rx | hioscar Blog | Oscar
Need medical advice? Call a doctor instead of your mom.
Telemedicine is a convenient way to treat common medical issues – and it’s growing in popularity.
Behind the ScenesOur Culture
8 min read
Dr. Viral Patel
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They don’t call it a waiting room for nothing.
If you’ve ever been to the doctor, then you probably know what it’s like to burn through a stack of last year’s National Geographic issues while you count the minutes until you see a doctor. And that’s usually after you’ve spent, on average, twenty days (opens in new tab) waiting for your appointment date with a primary care doctor. With specialists, the wait can be even longer.
As a patient, the process of waiting to get care for a common ailment may be all too familiar. If you don’t hustle to the ER or urgent care clinic for immediate relief, then you slog through reviews to find a doctor (who may or may not take your insurance), then wait on the phone to book an appointment for a future date, usually with whoever can see you the soonest. You wrestle with your calendar in a never-ending game of Musical Appointments to take time off from school or work. When the day finally arrives, you’ll spend upwards of two hours (opens in new tab) travelling door-to-door to see a doctor for a grand total of fifteen minutes. Then you’re left tapping your toes until your test results come in.
That’s just too much waiting.
Many medical professionals agree that a number of common ailments can be treated efficiently without a physical exam. Instead, an in-depth conversation about your symptoms with a doctor is often enough to provide treatment, or at the very least, point you in the right direction. So how does a health insurance company put an end to the waiting game that so many patients experience? Telemedicine.
With technology in everyone’s back pocket, telemedicine is a new benefit offered by health insurance companies to provide affordable, accessible care from any location, at any time. It’s simple. Patients can call a telemedicine doctor to talk through their symptoms and get on-the-spot treatment and clinical guidance.
The history of telemedicine
Believe it or not, telemedicine is actually pretty old skool. It was originally developed in the 1960s by NASA to monitor astronauts’ physical and psychological health during space missions. Some say the origin of telemedicine dates even further back in time to the 1920s, when radio doctors would treat patients live on air. This was long before the days of HIPAA (opens in new tab) laws, which prevent personal health information from being shared publicly.
Fast forward to today, and telemedicine has become a reliable source of affordable care for many insured earth-dwellers. With about 42,000 telemedicine calls a year at Oscar, and an average copay of $20 per PCP visit (opens in new tab), our members saved at least $1 million in out-of-pocket costs and 84,000 hours in travel time. The cost savings skyrockets even higher for members who avoided a trip to the ER or urgent care clinic.
Avoiding the guessing game with telemedicine
Navigating the healthcare system is complicated. When you get sick, it can be difficult to know where to get the right kind of help (opens in new tab). Often, it’s tempting to skip your primary care doctor and go straight to a specialist, urgent care, or the ER, which take a lot more time and are a lot more expensive than primary care. Without the guidance of a PCP, choosing your own care route could mean bouncing around the system with unnecessary doctor visits, ineffective treatments, and additional costs.
Given the many twists and turns in the paradoxical labyrinth of health insurance, many insured Americans face the same question: How do I get the care I need when I’m sick and how much will it cost me?
Dr. Viral Patel, a virtual doctor who treats Oscar patients, views this as a key benefit of telemedicine: The ability to guide patients’ care choices up front.
“Telemedicine is particularly beneficial for common health issues,” says Dr. Patel. “For example, if someone has a rash, they’ll often go directly to see a dermatologist, but that isn’t always necessary. You can be easily treated for most rashes by a primary care doctor. Patients often skip primary care to treat symptoms and end up waiting a long time to see a specialist for something that is more common.”
Your primary care doctor can help you suss out most types of situations so you know exactly where to go to get treatment—but it can often be difficult to get in touch with them quickly. A telemedicine doctor can provide instantaneous advice.
What telemedicine treats
Telemedicine doctors are board-certified primary care physicians who work remotely and treat patients by phone. Their services can be used to get virtual care almost anywhere in the U.S.
The popularization of telemedicine services throughout the healthcare industry has helped broaden access to healthcare in many rural areas where care is harder to access. It’s also made it possible for patients to receive care for minor issues when they’re on the road. This cuts back on costs for the consumer, even for people with insurance plans that cover the full price of most doctor’s visits.
Virtual doctors can walk you through most common conditions based on your answers to questions. In some cases, a photo or video chat can give them what they need to diagnose you or direct you to further care. After assessing your symptoms, they may send you to a specialist, urgent care clinic, or hospital—but at least you’ll know where to start.
"The most important part of diagnosing a patient is speaking to them, whether you're in person or over the phone,” says Dr. Patel. “There are many things that still need a physical exam, but they're actually relatively rare. Many common issues don't need a physical exam. A lot more people end up with a simple UTI then people who end up with appendicitis. Patients with abdominal pain need an exam, but those with a UTI generally don’t."
Virtual doctors usually treat three common types of issues:
Rx refills for certain types of drugs including birth control, blood pressure medications, long-term medications like inhalers, and medicine for minor illnesses like colds, sinus infections, and the flu.
Episodic and acute illnesses like rashes, pinkeye, coughs, colds and flus.
Gynecologic issues like UTIs and yeast infections.
There are some types of care that virtual doctors can’t provide. Issues that require diagnostic imaging services, controlled medications, or emergency situations that need immediate attention, are best handled in person.
Overall, the expansion of telemedicine has reduced unnecessary doctor’s visits, costly ER trips, and late-night dives down the internet research rabbit hole.
As NYU-Lutheran’s former ER director, Dr. Patel experienced these types of behaviors firsthand. "People would come to the ER all the time for medication refills for chronic issues like blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes. Oftentimes, their primary doctor was on vacation, or they had just moved. Refills are easily prescribed via telemedicine, freeing up ER doctors to spend more time taking care of acutely sick patients."
An integrated healthcare system
Because virtual doctors often work within an integrated system, they can deliver more integrated care. With Oscar’s telemedicine program, Doctor on Call, Dr. Patel and his colleagues can access benefits, health records, labs, claims, and past diagnoses so they have a better idea of what’s going on with a patient’s health.
Virtual doctors also collaborate with Oscar members’ Concierge teams to ensure they maximize their health benefits and save money. For patients with chronic diseases or illness, Concierge nurses are also looped in to make arrangements for extensive care like surgery, specialist visits, post-op follow-ups, or hospitalization. Each call is documented and the doctor’s notes appear in the patient’s health timeline, so it’s available to help inform future care.
"I think there will be a long-term interest in telemedicine,” says Dr. Patel. “From a patient's perspective, it's great for the convenience. From a doctor's perspective, it's great because you can take your time with your patients instead of rushing through their story eight different times with eight different people like at a clinic or ER. From a healthcare system viewpoint, it's great for cost management and patient satisfaction since we can guide patients towards appropriate care instead of bouncing around between multiple specialists. Many patients end up unhappy and with inappropriate care when they go directly to an inappropriate specialist. Telemedicine can help prevent that."
The future of telemedicine
Back when telemedicine started gaining momentum in the early 2000s, there were some serious skeptics who wondered if telemedicine’s effectiveness as a resource for medical treatment would stand the test of time. Today, the industry is still going strong. With healthcare costs at their peak, now more than ever, telemedicine is a providing affordable relief to many insured Americans.
Where do we go from here? Telemedicine technology not only provides basic clinical treatment options, but may soon incorporate lab tests, similar to those used in doctors offices, to help diagnose patients. With the development of new resources like at-home testing, local delivery services, and personal monitoring systems, there’s a great potential for telemedicine to address even more health issues.
"The more we use telemedicine, the more it can decrease unnecessary doctor visits and ultimately, provide more convenience for patients. In its current state, it’s already doing that. As we add more capabilities like home flu kits or strep tests, we can care for an even broader group of people while they remain in the comfort of their own homes,” says Dr. Patel.
Hands-on medical treatment will never go away entirely. But for many common issues, telemedicine is a convenient healthcare option that can save time, money, and trips to the clinic. As more people use it, it may help reduce the amount of time you spend in the waiting room when you do see the doctor in person.
Quality treatment. No appointments, no waiting rooms. It’s not just wishful thinking…it’s the new standard with telemedicine.
