A small but growing number of Physicians are getting their medical licenses in all 50 states. Telemedicine will allow these Doctors to treat patients in the most remote areas.
Telemedicine means Doctors provide medical consultation through the web, smartphone applications, and video conferences. But this practice requires Physicians to have a license to treat in different states from their permanent location itself. So Doctors in Boston, for example, can help patients in the most rural parts of the United States where access to Doctors is almost non existent.
Telemedicine has been around for a while but recently it has been gaining momentum since regulations have shifted to favor technology. According to a recent report the market for telemedicine is likely to reach $130 billion by 2025 since more insurance companies are willing to start paying for virtual consultations and treatments.
Blake McKinney is a Doctor with medical licenses in 49 states and working on getting the 50th. It’s still rare for Doctors to have that many licenses. Research from the Federation of State Medical Boards shows that in 2018 there were just 14 Doctors licensed everywhere.
Currently, about 59 million Americans reside in health professional-shortage areas, which are rural and urban areas with shortages of primary care providers. There is a Physician shortage and technology is a great solution to this problem.
As of 2018, there were already seven million telehealth users worldwide (up from an estimated 350,000 in 2013), and according to a recent survey by Becker Hospital Review, over 75% of Americans say they’re willing to attend a doctor’s appointment remotely.
Dr. Blake McKinney founded CirrusMD which gives patients access to a board-certified Physician in less than a minute in-app or on the web, via a chat window.
CirrusMD’s app integrates with electronic medical records systems in a way that’s compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the U.S. law designed to protect personal health information and data, and it supports voice chat, video, and photos in addition to text messaging. The company claims that more than 84% of health problems are resolved in virtual appointments and that less than 2% of patients are guided to an emergency room (ER) follow-up, and it says that its contracted Physicians have reduced 40% of avoidable ER visits to date.