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Now, the service is offered directly to consumers, with a fixed rate of $49 for 10 minutes and an additional 3 to 5 minutes running anywhere from free to $10 or so depending on whether the patient has health insurance that covers these visits. Those without health insurance are certainly saving a lot of money via this doctor's "visit," and those with health insurance may find that their plan completely covers the virtual visit, or that it still saved them in fees they may have incurred had they rushed off to the ER first.

"We really feel we're developing a whole new way of practicing medicine, and it's exciting," said Dr, Peter Antall, medical director of the Online Care Group who has been recruiting physicians for this service for the past two years, He said the group currently employs 45 full-time staff physicians and just over 100 contractor physicians, with another 100 or so in varying snowy owl iphone case stages of vetting, The physicians have the benefit of working full-time or part-time from their personal or home offices, though the criteria are strict to ensure that patients who call in see a private and professional environment..

And while Antall acknowledges that there are many skeptics of telemedicine -- those who worry about privacy, the quality of virtual visits, and so forth -- he thinks we'll get over it eventually. "Patients do have to get comfortable with this, but I remember a time where we were worried about electronic banking, and we got over that. Maybe it isn't perfect, but it is as close as it could be, and there are mechanisms in place to deal with potential security breaches."Likewise, not all physicians are convinced of the virtues of telemedicine. But some, like Myers, are doing everything they can to get the word out about the benefits.

Even -- or perhaps especially -- over the phone, Myers' enthusiasm is infectious, She argues that she often makes stronger connections during her phone exams than in clinics and hospitals because both she and the patients are in the comfort of their own environments, with patients often calling from their own beds and relieved to snowy owl iphone case learn they don't have some horrible, rare disease they read about online, or that they don't have to go to an ER just to get a simple prescription, Sometimes, she says, they even call back requesting her specifically..

She goes on to list several other benefits as well -- her patients don't risk infecting others by going to hospitals or clinics, not to mention risk infecting the doctor, and they don't have to spend time, money, and energy on a trip to the ER, nor the hefty bill that comes with said trip. And in the case of the patient who had strep throat, Myers basically taught her how to examine her own lymph nodes, which she realized she'd never done before in her years of practice in clinics because she simply performs the exams herself. But when patients must be a doctor's hands, they become better informed about how to analyze their own symptoms, and can better monitor them throughout the course of taking medications to determine when to stop.