Online Medical Consult Offered by HealthPartners

By---Terri Bernacchi, PharmD, MBA, Health Advisory Professionals

Minnesota companies have long been in the forefront of leading health care initiatives in technology, insurance, and consumerism. Certainly, HealthPartners is familiar to most of us in health care as one of those thought leading companies.

This week, they announced the launch of the “virtuwell” offering to consumers for 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week on-line access to a medical professional (nurse practitioners) for the diagnosis and treatment of simple medical conditions for a small ($40) fee. Ostensibly, this treatment would be isolated to the treatment of conditions that are easily and safely confined to “evidence based” decision-trees and medical flow charts: such ailments as colds, cough and allergy, ear pain, yeast and urinary tract infection.

But the new online service does raise some interesting questions from several angles: legal/liability (who is responsible for quality issues that could arise) ; clinical best practices (you cannot really “see” or “touch” a patient or peek inside the ear or smell their breath or gain the context you can when you are in the same room); what is done for communication and follow up perspectives? There are additional questions that relate to privacy, quality of care without reliable access to a relevant patient history, and practical concerns relating to continuity of care if the patient does have a primary care practitioner or drug interactions if they are on other medications. Since most health practitioners (and particularly those that prescribe drugs) are licensed on a state-by-state basis, there are also interesting questions in terms of how the caregiver is licensed or managed in one state while rendering care to a person in another state. Will this care require payment outside of the established insurance process or will it be covered at all?

Regardless of the details or the answers to some of these compelling questions, this is certainly going to be a service of interest to many consumers. A key question that one must ask when you see a party blazing a new health care trail is this: Would I use that service for myself or a member of my family? The answer to that question (at least for me), is YES. I have personally already used one of the now famous in-the-retail-pharmacy nurse clinics. And as a pharmacist, I must admit, I was pleased with the care of the nurse practitioner treating my conjunctivitis.

Change is not always a great or even good thing. But this evolving way of relating to the needs of an individual patient may offer value in these cost and access-challenged times. At a minimum, it will be interesting to see what progresses from here.

Read the details at the following link: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthpartners-launches-247-online-clinic

Terri currently works for a large health sciences firm serving payers, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers and other stakeholders in health care as a Senior Principal in Managed Markets. The thoughts put forth on these postings are not necessarily reflective of the views of her employer nor other Health Thought Leader colleagues. Terri has had a varied career in health related settings including: 9 years in a clinical hospital pharmacy setting, 3 years as a pharmaceutical sales rep serving government, wholesaler, managed markets and traditional physician sales, 3 years working for the executive team of an integrated health system working with physician practices, 4 years as the director of pharmacy for a large BCBS plan, 12 years experience as founder and primary servant of a health technology company which was sold to her current employer three years ago. She has both a BS and a PharmD in Pharmacy and an MBA.