It's amazing what the free market can do:
Patients will no longer have to wait a month to see a doctor for an urgent sore throat, wait all day for a doctor to return their call or leave work midday and drive a long distance for a routine appointment. Instead, patients will log on to their computers and find themselves face-to-face with physicians over Webcam.
They also have electronic medical records and malpractice insurance. Medicare patients need not apply.
Full story here. NCPA summary here.
I suspect the biggest problem will be the third-party payers. As you have pointed out before at this blog, Medicare does not pay for e-mail consultations and most private insurers pay the same way Medicare pays.
But for the insurance bureacracies, this sort of innovation would have been commonplace years ago.
I agree with Joe.
This is such an interesting and innovative idea. I was a bit skeptical when I was first reading it, but I think it may actually prove to be very beneficial for our health care system. Undoubtedly there will be some kinks that need to be worked out initially, but once the system smooths itself out, it could be ingenious. The way it is explained, it should benefit everyone involved – doctors, patients, insurance companies, and employers. I really hope the American public warms to the idea. It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes.