After opening in 2013 as an online service for patients to find physicians and schedule appointments, the Fort Lauderdale company, now with nine employees, has moved twice to larger offices and recently introduced a feature that allows patients to visit doctors via their webcams.
Only a few doctor-patient visits have taken place through the site so far, but Marsidi and his partners are seeking venture capital to hire a sales and marketing team to spread the word.
Telemedicine, also called telehealth, is “very hot,” he said in an interview. “It’s a growing and burgeoning industry, but the regulation hasn’t yet caught up with the innovation in the marketplace. Once there are some rules making it clear to doctors what’s allowed and not allowed, it’s going to be very good for the industry.”
Proponents say the global health care industry is moving rapidly toward telemedicine as an effective way to provide high-quality, low-cost medical care to rural communities, at-need families, home-bound seniors, as well as patients who can’t or don’t want to travel to a doctor.
Want to publish your own articles on DistilINFO Publications?
Send us an email, we will get in touch with you.
Hospitals, universities, physicians and emergency care providers are already providing telemedicine services regularly, or planning to roll them out.
And that’s going to open up job opportunities in South Florida and throughout the state, proponents say.
“In telehealth, there’s the potential for everyone to win,” said Tamara Demko, telehealth expert for Florida TaxWatch.
This year, the Florida legislature expects to enact a law requiring telemedicine consultations by certified health care providers to follow the same standards of care as required for in-person visits. The law allows non-physician caregivers to provide services and requires documentation of the services in the patient’s medical records. Pain pill abuse would be prevented by prohibiting prescriptions of controlled substances to treat chronic non-malignant pain, unless a patient is in a licensed facility or is a hospice patient.
Although some telemedicine supporters are disappointed that the proposed law does not currently require insurance companies to compensate for telemedicine services, they say it’s a needed step toward legitimizing the services in Florida.
“It’s more than symbolic,” Demko said of the legislation. “It tells telehealth providers who are not physicians, ‘It’s OK to practice your profession.’ “
The state’s legitimization will eventually increase demand from patients and persuade insurers to begin covering telemedicine services, supporters say.
“The time has come where this is going to be so common, it won’t even be called telemedicine anymore,” said Paula Guy, CEO of the non-profit Georgia Partnershipfor TeleHealth, which helps secure grants and equipment for school systems, nursing homes, mental health facilities and other centers in Florida’s neighboring state, and trains primary care physicians and specialists to use the technology.
Recently the partnership secured a $100,000 grant to connect two ambulances in rural Hancock County with two hospitals outside the county. When paramedics go to an emergency scene, they can connect diagnostic equipment to the patient, bring a physician up on a video screen and send data to the doctor for evaluation and diagnosis.
Guy hopes the demonstration project will result in all of Georgia’s ambulances getting the technology after officials see how patients can be diagnosed and treated at their homes rather than in emergency rooms.
Guy is also part of a new for-profit company that will offer a complete package of telemedicine services, from worker and doctor training to equipment and software sales and ongoing IT support. She sees similar opportunities opening in Florida.
“The sky’s the limit,” she said. Jobs will open up for IT professionals to set up and maintain the secure teleconference, data-stream links and software. People will be needed to train and certify workers, to develop academic curricula and teach certification courses to tech-shy physicians, and to coordinate the “nurse presenters” who serve as the remote physicians’ eyes, ears and arms in dealing with on-site patients, she said.
A March 2014 Florida TaxWatch report on telemedicine said opportunities could open for dedicated, skilled workers to service clients of high-speed Internet service providers, and provide options for health care workers nearing retirement age to remain in the workforce with reduced physical and time demands
Seventeen Florida-based jobs are currently offered on the website of Sunrise-basedMDLive.com, a pioneering national telehealth service provider founded in 2006. Twelve of those jobs are listed as based in Sunrise, including positions in the company’s sales, marketing, IT, medical, legal and call center departments.
MDLive offers round-the-clock access to live conferences with physicians. InJanuary 2014, the company secured $23.6 million in venture capital funding. In April, the company inked a deal to provide Cigna members access to MDLive’s physician network and in December announced a similar partnership withWalgreens. Efforts to reach an MDLive spokesman were unsuccessful, but analysts say the Walgreens deal is a sign of things to come, and more large retailers are expected to jump into the digital health market.
Date: February 21, 2015