Anthem Seeking OK To Test Online Physician Visits
By Wall, J K | |
Proquest LLC |
Online physician visits could become far more common in
House Bill 1258 would allow the large health insurer
The technology - which allows doctors to make virtual house calls via a
The pilot would be conducted by primary care physicians at
The bill, which has cleared the House and been referred to the
After the pilot phase, the Medical Licensing Board of
"We believe that this online service offers greater flexibility to primary care physicians," said Dr.
Online physician consultations have been allowed in
HB 1258 would remove that restriction, allowing doctor-patient consultations where no previous relationship existed.
It's that removal that the
"We're cautious on it," he said. "There's a strong belief that a key to providing quality health care is the physician-patient relationship."
ISMA has worked with
American Well offers online visits in 44 states, although only about 30 of them allow visits without a previous in-person encounter.
But Anthem sees online visits as a key piece of a broad transition in health care toward serving more patients more efficiently. Anthem will pay
Lee sees online visits as a way for physicians to extend their reach to geographic regions without enough physicians. Seventeen of
Online visits also could allow physicians to serve patients after hours. That could help reduce unnecessary visits to the emergency room, Lee noted, although HB 1258 restricts online visits to non-emergency situations.
Online visits also could benefit aging physicians, allowing them to remain active without bearing the full burden of running a brick-and-mortar practice, Lee said.
Aging baby boomer doctors are retiring in greater numbers, right as baby boomers create a boost in demand for health care. In addition, Obamacare's tax subsidies could increase insurance coverage, which could also lead to greater use of health care.
"It's an important part of health care reform and the continuing transition of health care to a value-based system from a volume-based system," Lee said.
Rinebold, however, said it's at least possible that online visits could further fragment the health care that patients receive - which has been shown to increase rather than reduce costs.
If a patient who normally sees an office-based physician does an afterhours online visit with a different physician, there could be gaps in that patient's care.
The Live Health Online technology tries to counter that trend by generating electronic patient records and making them available to a patient's other caregivers in a way that complies with federal privacy laws.
Dr.
"It's a baby step, where we're going with this," Park said.
House Bill 1258
* The bill would launch a six-month pilot program to allow primary care physicians to provide online visits and even medication prescriptions without seeing the patient in person.
* The pilot program would use Live Health Online, a program developed by
*
* After the pilot, the Medical Licensing Board of
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