While
an ER visit may indeed treat medical needs, the reality
is that most visits end up being more about peace of mind.
If your child's skin is turning red in the middle of the
night, you might not know if it's harmless flushing, or
a serious allergic reaction. So you rush off to the
emergency room, fill out some forms, and sit in a room full
of contagious people. You wait and wait, finally get
to speak to a nurse, then wait some more, and explain your
problem again to the resident. Then you may have a
battery of tests done, wait some more, and finally leave
with a prescription and a bill for $650.
All
this for a problem that could have been far less expensive,
and handled more simply and expediently by discussing the
situation with your doctor. According to the American
Medical Association, about 70% of doctor and emergency room
visits are actually just informational.
However,
asking your doctor a health question is rarely as easy as
picking up the phone. Because insurance companies
do not normally reimburse doctors for phone care, most traditional
practices avoid offering such service. Instead, their
objective is to get you into the office so that you can
be billed for the service you receive.
Paying
for that office and the surrounding bureaucracy is not cheap.
A doctor's costs may include the office itself, a receptionist,
a triage nurse, someone handling insurance billing, office
managers, and expensive medical equipment. All this
is very expensive to maintain, so generating as many office
visits as possible is critical for most doctors to even
stay in business.
So you
get stuck in a system that is inconvenient, expensive, and
does not value your time.
Telephone
Consultation Services
As health
savings accounts become more popular and more people are
paying for their own doctor visits, several companies have
begun offering inexpensive telephone and email consultations
with board-certified physicians. These companies can
offer dramatically lower prices because they have cut out
most of the costs that burden traditional medical facilities.
Though
telephone consultations are obviously not appropriate for
all medical conditions, it is an accepted standard of care
for many health-care problems. In fact, telephone
medicine has been around as long as the telephone, and is
practiced throughout the country by most doctors at night
and on weekends.
Here
are a few companies I am aware of that are now offering
telephone consultations with licensed physicians.
(If you are aware of others, please let me know).
Doctor
on Call (www.unadoctoroncall.com).
This company currently has over 240 board-certified physicians
on call, with 24-hour access. The physicians with
this service will not diagnose or prescribe, but they will
provide information based on your questions. The price
is a bargain - only $5.95/month for the family for an unlimited
number of calls.
TelaDoc
Medical Services (www.teladoc.com).
This company also provides 24-hour access to members and
dependents age 12+. Telephone medical consultations
are with primary care doctors who can also diagnose medical
problems and prescribe appropriate medications. There
is an initial $18 registration fee, and a monthly fee of
$4.25 for an individual or $7 for a family. Consultations
are a flat $35.
Doctokr
(www.doctokr.com) is
a practice run by Virginia physician Alan Dappen.
Though this service is only available to people who can
come in to his office for an initial visit, it is a model
likely to be copied by other providers as consumers become
more price conscious when shopping for medical care.
24-hour access is available by telephone and email.
Consultations are billed in 5-minute increments ranging
in price from $15 to $22.50. A simple consultation
to request medication refills costs from $10 to $15 for
up to 5 medications. There is a monthly fee of $5.95.
Saving
You Time and Money
Not
only will these services save you money when compared to
a typical doctor visit, but they will also save you time.
You may be able to quickly resolve routine medical issues
in a fraction of the time you would spend accessing care
from urgent care facilities, emergency rooms or physician
offices. If you use a service that will prescribe
medications, you could have your consultation finished and
the medicine in hand in less than the time it would otherwise
take just to visit the doctor.
As telephone
technology evolves, I anticipate these services will add
picture taking and even recording vital signs, and the scope
of these physician consultations will become broader.
With doctors visits approaching $100 each and ER visits
in excess of $800, it doesn't take much to justify the small
monthly fee for most of these services.
Though
there are certainly times when visiting your doctors office
or the emergency room is the most appropriate thing to do,
as a smart consumer you owe it to yourself to be aware of
all your options. Using a physician telephone consultation
service can help you avoid the expense, time, and hassles
of urgent care facilities, emergency rooms, and visits to
the doctor.
To your
health and wealth,
Wiley
Long
President - HSA
for America
P.S. - Do you currently own a health savings account?
If so, how is it working out for you? Are you taking
advantage of the tax benefits? Are you letting your
investments grow, or taking them out to cover medical expenses?
I'd love to hear what's working, and what you think of the
entire concept of health savings accounts.
P.P.S.
- Over half of all Americans now suffer from at least one
of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, including high blood
pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, obesity, and diabetes.
Next month I'll be discussing the key dietary steps that
can enable you to avoid these diseases (so you can continue
to let your HSA grow tax-free!).
