Medical insurers Aetna, Cigna agree to pay for online doctor visits

Dr. Richard Frankenstein (love his name) president of the CMA has also given his endorsement to make use of new technology for better healthcare.... Prices vary from $25 to $125, which patients pay with a credit card at the end of the session. This is not a substitute for office visits, but can certainly help with keeping in touch and on top of health conditions...if you view the Dr. Parkinson blog under the blog roll, you can see how he uses it to see patients via his web cam and makes calls at the patient office or home in New York...a combination of both technology and actual in office visits can create a good over all picture for better health care. Software to document the visits is the next item to look at for these visits, as it is out there, but making it work with a current EMR or using the EMR to document could be the answer to getting the information documented for claim payments...BD

Consulting your family physician is finally moving into the 21st century and out of the doctor's office. Since the dawn of e-mail, patients have been pleading for more doctors to offer medical advice online. No traffic jams, no long waits, no germ-infested offices. There was always one major roadblock: Many health insurers wouldn't pay for it. Until now. Dr. Christy Calderon, a family physician at Kaiser Permanente in Whittier, Calif., conducts up to half her appointments over the phone or online with a 3-inch camera affixed to her desktop computer.
Meanwhile, at-home devices that check patients' blood pressure and diabetics' sugar levels are becoming cheaper. "It's perfectly appropriate that we use 21st-century technology in the 21st century," said Dr. Richard Frankenstein, president of the California Medical Association. Many of the new online consultations are far more structured than a simple e-mail. If insurance companies are expected to pay the bill, physicians need documentation of the event, including diagnosis and time spent.