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Need a Quick Diagnosis? A Prescription for What Ails You? The Doctor Will Video Chat With You Now
One of the hottest trends in health care is telemedicine networks of doctors who diagnose ailments over the phone
In the future, we’re going to make fewer visits to the doctor’s office, and it will have little to do with scales that show more pounds than the ones at home or the interminable waitson cold exam tables.
It has to do with our phones.
After a tentative start, a form of telemedicine where doctors consult with patients through mobile video conversations is beginning to pick up steam. According to the research firm Park Associates, the number of these type of consultations will nearly triple over the next year, from 5.7 million in 2014 to more than 16 million next year. By 2018,it estimates that volume will jump to 130 million calls. A recent survey by the consulting firm Towers Watson found that almost 40 percent of the large employers (more than 1,000 employees) queried said that by 2015, they expect to offer their employees coverage for telemedicine consultations as a low-cost alternative to ER visits or face-to-face doctor appointments. Another 34 percent said theyexpect to do so by 2016 or 2017.
The doctor will phone you now
The strongest argument for telemedicine is that it’s a much more efficient and considerably less expensive way to deal with relatively minor ailments—sinus problems, urinary tract infections, a kid’s fever. Based on what they see and hear from the other side of the phone, doctors recommend treatments and can write short-termprescriptions, albeit not for narcotics, antidepressants or certain other mental health meds and non-therapeutic drugs, such as Viagra and Cialis.
Some have raised questions about the potential for teledoctors to overprescribe antibiotics, particularly for conditions that generally require a lab test to confirm, such as strep throat. As Lauri Hicks, an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control(CDC) told a telehealth research group, "There is a lot of concern about making a diagnosis without examining a patient—not only for overprescribing, but also for underprescribing or misdiagnosing cases where there might be a more serious infection."  
One thing that makes medical organizations uneasy about this type of medicine is that consults would rarely be with the patient’s own doctor, butrather with a physician they’ve never met, one who’s part of a large telemedicine network. Take the case of Doctor on Demand, a company that’s less than a year old, but has already gained a lot of attention, at least in part due to the involvement of Dr. Phil McGraw, the TV celebrity psychologist—he’s an investor and spokesperson and his son Jay is one of its founders.
Once a person downloads thefree Doctor on Demand app, they can log in, enter their symptoms, provide a relevant medical history—medications they take, allergies and other information—and request a consult. Then a randomly selected physician—the company has a total of 1,400 board-certified doctors in its network—gets in touch with the patient, usually within 15 minutes, and starts asking questions. A typical virtual “visit”lasts less than 15 minutes and costs $40. The physician gets $30, and Doctor on Demand gets $10.
It seems a sensible way to deal with the afflictions that may not merit the aggravation and time involved in getting an appointment and going to the doctor’s office. But while acknowledging that telemedicine can be a good thing, the medical establishment so far has been wary of giving the technology afull embrace. In June, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued guidelines recommending that doctors giving advice over the phone should be licensed in the state where the patient lives. The AMA also agreed with the Federation of State Medical Boards that doctor consults through voice-only calls, emails or text messages don’t qualify as telemedicine. A video connection is needed, it said....