Medical Tuesday Blog
Web Consultations: Then and Now
We set up Web Consultations decades ago. However, we were required to have a complete physical examination recorded. Hence, the patient had to make a trip to our office once so that it was recorded. Follow up exams could be done by phone just as prescription and tests could be ordered on the basis of a phone consultation. There was also the limitation of state licenses. Patients had to travel to our license location to be treated and examined at least once. This was circumnavigated by giving a second opinion with recommendations which could then be administer as any consultation could. This now has been changed by the COVID epidemic and Telemedicine has become prevalent throughout the United States and multi state licenses are not always required. For interest sakes, here is the copy of our web consultations of three decades ago. Read more: Web Medical Consultations are becoming increasingly popular for second opinions. Several of the large clinics have recorded their experiences in the medical literature. These web medical consultations are on a cash basis since they don’t meet the usual insurance or Medicare requirements of a direct patient examination. Web consultations are based on submission of examinations and test results from the patient’s primary and/or consulting physician. You must acquire your own medical records to include a current medical history, physical examination, pulmonary function tests, x-ray reports, electrocardiogram, and any available blood tests. If you do not live near Sacramento and would like a second pulmonary opinion, you may want to consider this twenty-first century approach. Distance is not a factor. Dr Meyer has rendered second opinions to patients from other continents. If interested, please contact Dr Meyer’s office at 916-488-5864 or send an email to DrMeyer@DelMeyer.net for an online or virtual appointment or time frame. Please outline your pulmonary problem as you perceive it, indicate when it started, how it’s progressing, what makes the symptoms worse and what makes them better, the tests that have already been done, and the diagnosis and treatment you have been given so far. Include copies of all medical records and tests regarding this problem. You must acquire your own medical records to include a current medical history, physical examination, pulmonary function tests, x-ray reports, electrocardiogram, and any available blood tests and send to: Delbert H Meyer, MD You will then complete a questionnaire that will be emailed to you, after which a phone interview will be conducted prior to rendering the consultative report. Medicare and Medicaid patients cannot apply. Be sure to include your full name, mailing address, telephone number, email address, and whether you can open attached documents in WP, MSW or both. The fee for reviewing the data, conducting the telephone interview and rendering a consultative report is $400. The consultation fee has to be received before the case will be reviewed and a second opinion rendered. Since we are not your treating physician and a personal physical examination will not be conducted, no prescriptions or treatment will be authorized. You may discuss our recommendations with your personal physician. This is strictly a second opinion that will be rendered in writing based on the information received. For medical/legal and licensing requirements, the opinion is rendered in Sacramento County, California.
This has all now changed with the Covid 19 Pandemic: We are now able to treat patients electronically from any state. We have taken a position with eDoc Telemed. You may go to their website and obtain a physician, pay his fee with a credit card and make a cyber appointment and be evaluated without making a trip to the doctors office, sit in his waiting room, be seen and finally complete your visit. Now you are able to see a physician at almost any time, immediately if desired, and with face-to-face visualization on your computer, and be interviewed, examined as necessary, received a prescription and never leave your house. Just go to eDocTelemed, choose your physician and be seen almost immediately. My, what a pandemic accomplished that physicians had not been able to do for the past 50 years since we first tried. Feedback . . .
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