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Rite Aid Drug Stores Offer Virtual Doc Visits
Lucas123 writes "Rite Aid today announced it is offering virtual face-to-face physician consultations through an in-store kiosk. The virtual consultation services are currently being tested in the Detroit area, but the company expects they will do well and the virtual consults will expand to other regions. The service costs $45 for a 10-minute physician consultation. Consultations with nurses are free."
Why is healthcare such a rip-off? In nationalised healthcare systems, the doctors get paid insanely high; in private healthcare systems, the doctors get paid insanely high.
We can see from countries like Cuba that doctors aren't the result of educating a rare genius. But for some reason in the Western world we feel the need to artificially constrain their supply, take them through a hazing ritual to make them cynical about their patients, then treat them like gods.
Let's return medicine to what it started as in Greece: a calling to care for the sick. Let it be a thoroughly secure vocation for permanent healthcare workers, where there is an understanding of difficulties on both sides - not one solved by high price doctors, lawyers, insurance, third party agencies and miscellaneous bureaucracy (public or private).
So this virtual 'doctor' earns about $561,600 salary a year for consulting services? There is no liability, no physical exam, no prescription services. This is a great business model!
Has the US health care system really come to this?
Please enlighten me, do Americans consider $45 for a 10 minute virtual doctor visit an attractive price?
In Australia seeing a real physician (GP) in the flesh within a few hours for any reasonable length of time typically costs between $35-$60, of which the public health system pays $35. So net cost to me is $FREE-$25.
I recently dropped a weight on my foot which fractured my toes, I went to my local bulk billing GP without an appointment, was seen within 30 minutes, was referred to get an X-ray across the road without an appointment (wait time - 10 minutes, X-ray time, 10 minutes, result with professional summary time - 40 minutes), then returned to the original GP, wait time - 5 minutes.
Total net cost to me for all of the above - $0 (no private health insurance involved here).
Gee, who would expect an unbiased, independent recommendation from a doctor who works for a store, that sells drugs?
"Hi, I'm your Virtual Pfizer/Novartis/Merck Doc . . . I'm sure that your illness will fall into a category that fits our product offerings."
"I don't want to gossip, but I would stay away from Dr. Wallgreens . . . his stuff uses powder made from DNA replication from the ground up remains of old Sam Walton's bones. He is considered a bit of a quack in the Virtual Doctor Community."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Generally speaking, I'd like some sort of diagnostic tests beyond a conversation and a limited visual inspection via streaming with questionable resolution.
So I could pay $45 to have a doctor talk to me, unable to examine me, unable to do anything other than make generic suggestions based on my conditions, or I could pay around a hundred and actually find out what's wrong with me?
Think I might pick the latter so I don't end up paying for both when the first run of suggestions doesn't pan out.
I seriously doubt that this is a virtual doc. I am guessing that it is an avatar for an offshored group of ppl
Why should I pay RiteAid $270/hr for a Skype chat with a doctor in India, China, or the Czech Republic when I can go see my regular doctor for as long as I need for $70 ($20 if I use my insurance)?
Sounds like an offshoring insurance bilking scam to me.
"Gee, who would expect an unbiased, independent recommendation from a doctor who works for a store, that sells drugs? "
When you go to a 'real' doctor, a part of your waiting time is because Pfizer/Novartis/Merck representants are before you in the doctor's office, promising him free computers/travel/money returns if he prescribes lots of Pfizer/Novartis/Merck medicines.
After going to the American Well web site to research the tech used for this network, I was not really surprised that I found no mention of how they maintain a secure system and adhere to HIPAA regulations. This whole concept, which is the coming future of medicine like it or not, has strict security measures in place for the protection of patient medical records. However I do not see this in action on American Well's website, all they put forth is "firewalls" shown in a diagram of the network design. Big whoop. They need to be a little more forth coming about their security practices and measures, if it was easy (and cheap) then every hospital in the nation would already be set up. So far a "fail" on not mentioning protocols used for the network, nor any mention of encryption of signal.
House gets out of prison and "virtual doctor" is the only gig he can get. Abrasive bedside manner! Pissed off executives! An interesting life-threatening case stumbled upon out of the blue! The episode writes itself.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
virtual customer service. Use your imagination, and you can be served virtually. Then when you're done you can go somewhere else to interact with someone who cares.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Google was fined HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF US DOLLARS for allowing Canadian drug ads? Clearly there are strong and invisible forces driving the cost of healthcare up. Physicians and nurses are the cannon fodder. Whereas their salaries and numbers are set by the govt, their administrators are invisible and unregulated. There are 19 hospital administrators in Boston whose salaries exceed $1 million. And they havent saved a single life. Many of them serve on other corporate boards as well - get get paid handsomely for that >100k per slot. Some are still practicing physicians. Are there enough hours in a day to justify their income? This is money being paid to people who work in non profit institutions. Most of the money hospitals make comes from Medicare - money that comes from the taxpayer.
Your new pacemaker comes with 50 million free beats!
You can buy additional beats at pulsemore.com
(Close to home)
I'm a US primary care doctor. I've worked in Australia and New Zealand. Both systems have their benefits and flaws, but I can assure you that US patients aren't ready for rational health care spending:
"I can't get my bypass surgery on demand, even though I'm still smoking?"
"You mean that we aren't gonna put my 85 year old relative on a ventilator in the ICU?"
"You mean my baby with multiple congenital defects is not a candidate for a multimillion dollar surgery + 2 years in neonatal ICU?"
On the other hand, in New Zealand and Australia, you can have a nurse come to your house to help you with your insulin, the government uses it's purchasing power to drive a hard bargain with pharmaceutical companies and getting an appointment with a primary care doctor is not as hard as it is in the US. That seems like a pretty good trade.
The United States has, far and away, the best care ONCE YOU GET SICK. But if you don't want to get sick? Get your care overseas. The outcome is the same. it just costs ten times more to do it the US way.
As far as the cost? Right now, I clear about $75/hr on $170 gross/hr. I need to see 30 patients per day to make that work. (On another front, having to purchase an Electronic Health Record is going to put me out of business.) If I could do three 10 minute consults per hour and take home $75 (because I assume that Rite-Aid takes home the rest), I'm in.
I don't really know what other doctors make but I think that I'm just about average. I don't think that what I make is wildly different than what computer consultants make.
Pharmacies should be banned from hiring physicians due to the conflict of interest inherent in this situation: the physician is probably under a lot of pressure to sell drugs stocked by the pharmacy. If pharmacies really cared about patient health they would recognize that the physical exam component of a medical visit is an integral part of effective medical practice. I just wonder what is going to happen when (not if) someone with a life threatening condition is misdiagnosed and dies because of their "business model".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47 ..."
"The right likes to think that every Leftist "hates" the "rich". I suppose there are those on the Left who hate the rich, but if they do, their anger is misplaced. It's the "wannabe's" you have to watch out for.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
There are lot of things that can be done on the phone, but visiting a doctor is not one of them. Diagnosis requires physical presence, a doctor can't examine a patient that is not there.
They can save plenty of man-hours because the diagnosis will be simple for 90% of patients - gunshot or stab wound.
A competing service has been around for some time. You get a word processor were you write down your symptoms, and ads for the appropriate medicines appear on any website that you visit subsequently.
They're called the "Google Docs".
Local independent Urgent Care clinics in my community have prescription medication vending machines inside. If this is the route we're gonna take, we might as well just have drive through shacks where you stop first at the doctor vending machine and then the drug machine next to it.
I'm hesitant to read TFA.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That's odd, I didn't see any of those in the L.I.M.B. clinic in Detroit...
Except that this is illegal. Welcome to 5 years ago.
Gee, who would expect an unbiased, independent recommendation from a doctor who works for a store, that sells drugs?
I dunno ... how about the hundreds of millions of people who go to homeopaths, naturopaths, nutritionists, etc? They seem to have no problem with conflicts of interest, so why would they have an issue with this?
Perhaps even more likely:
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
You need more protein than a vegan typically gets, unless they are very careful or very rich.
It's not your society, it's ours.
It's taking some time, but we are slowly overriding the heartless bastards looking to reimpose feudalism on us all.
How about you go away and move to Somalia. I hear they have jobs for gunners there.
Pharmacies should be banned from hiring physicians due to the conflict of interest inherent in this situation: the physician is probably under a lot of pressure to sell drugs stocked by the pharmacy. +1
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Actually, in countries with nationalized health care (i. e. most of the rest of the world) physicians in general are paid less than here. My daughter and her husband have spent time in Australia and New Zealand, and are presently living in Canada. The general practitioner she saw in Wellington would take her generous paid vacation and work at a group practice here in the US, adding about 50% to her total income. By the same token, she was always happy to return to New Zealand where she could spend the majority of her time actually helping sick people instead of pushing paperwork and struggling with all the bureaucratic BS.
"Come to Rite Aid for all your rite needs - burial rites, marriage rites, rites of manhood! You name it, we got it!
"Rite Aid, the rite merchandise at the rite price!"
I can't see anyone selling malpractice/liability insurance for this scheme at a reasonable price - there's just too much to miss when using telepresence rather than being there. It will just take one lawsuit because some teledoc misses something that should have been caught had he/she been there in person and the whole idea of telemedicine will go out the window.
That is all.
My wife used to work in a Walgreens in a particularly bad part of town, so there will be the poor coming in willy nilly at all hours of the day asking for advice from any employee in the store who happens to be walking past - guy stocking milk cartons, pharmacy assistants, the retail store manager - What to put on this rash? What to do with this pulsing pain in my stomach? etc. She's seen plenty of times where an illegal migrant construction worker with a nail through their hand or eyeball would come in asking for medical advice.
I guess now they'll be formally charging money for this.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
There’s no reason this business is restricted to the kiosk. The kiosk is just a computer with internet connected to http://www.mynowclinic.com/ . Regarding those who see a conflict when a pharmacy and a doctor are under the same roof, there may be such a conflict, but the the connection isn't obvious. Rite Aid is using its brand and locations to promote this online clinic. The NowClinic About page says “NowClinic online care, an offering of OptumHealth”. There’s nothing on http://www.optumhealth.com/our-company/companyinfo/ explaining the relationship with Rite Aid. I suspect Now Clinic simply made a deal with Rite Aid. One doesn’t own the other, as far as I can see.
(||) Nehmo (||)
Talking to a professional is not much different than talking to a friend. If you need a diagnosis, you need blood tests and other diagnostics. This is not real medical care that is being offered by Rite-Aid, and real medical care is what many people need. Paying to talk to a professional is like counseling, and that professional must be mighty high to warrant being paid for such mostly useless interaction.