If you can live stream movies, why not live stream medical care?
Insurance company UnitedHealthcare will start covering visits to the doctor's office — via video chat. Patients and physicians talk live online — on smartphones, tablets or home computer — to get to a clinical diagnosis. This move to cybermedicine could save insurers a ton of money — or have unintended consequences.
Cybermedicine has been long-discussed by the experts. Now, Eric Neiman, father to a little girl in San Francisco, can explain how it works — from personal experience.
A new study from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) offers some early insights into the effects of increasing numbers of emailed communications on doctors, suggesting that reimbursement models and physician workflow may need to adjust to accommodate message management.
The results were published online in Health Affairs.
