We’ve written about advances in telehealth and telemedicine implementations many times in the past few years. We most recently wrote about significant increases in physician telehealth adoption reported in American Well’s Telehealth Index 2019 Physician Survey. We also covered Capital Coordinated Medicine’s hybrid telehealth model that provides primary medical service to homebound patients with nursing assistants from Senior Helpers and custom telemedicine hardware from Curavi Health.
The San Francisco-based Plushcare digital telemedicine service has announced that it now offers primary healthcare and virtual doctor’s visits in all 50 American states. Plushcare currently serves more than 100,000 patients with physicians from 50 top medical institutions. Physicians with Plushcare resolve 97% of patient issues in the first visit.
Communicating via desktop or mobile apps, PlushCare physicians have diagnosed more than 3,500 medical conditions. The service offers same-day appointments from a selection of doctors and on-demand lab testing.
PlushCare accepts office visit co-pays for many insurance plans. The service charges a $99 flat rate for patients without insurance or who have a plan Plushcare does not currently accept. In response to an email inquiry, a PlushCare representative said the service doesn’t currently accept Medicare coverage.
Convenient, affordable, and stress-free medical consults via telemedicine services such as PlushCare have the potential to remove a significant cost burden from emergency departments and urgent care centers. If Medicare covered telemedicine services, it’s easy to imagine hearing a huge sigh of relief from older people who currently make frequent visits to physician’s offices to get healthcare services.
