Telemedicine as a side gig?

[Tenesmus83]

I was wondering if anyone is doing telemedicine on the side. Please share some experience of what it's like and
how much some of these companies are paying per pt.

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[BoardingDoc]

I was wondering if anyone is doing telemedicine on the side. Please share some experience of what it's like and
how much some of these companies are paying per pt.

Did it for a while. $23/pt. It sucks and I quit. When it's quick easy money, it's tolerable. When it's a hypochondriac who thinks they're calling about X but they're really calling about their underlying anxiety disorder, it's abysmal.

Never again unless they start paying many times more.

 

[AMEHigh]

I'm not EM, but I'm doing it.
I was with 2 companies, but right before I started with the 2nd one I decided I had enough jobs haha.
For that one it was $75/hour and you got that regardless of whether you "saw" a patient or not. You just signed up for time slots and then if I patient logged in you would have to see them.

For the company I'm still with it's for treating certain conditions (trying to be vague) and you get $50/patient per month. After the initial 10 min consult the monthly work isn't too much. Apparently there's a doctor who does it pretty much full time that has 300 patients on his panel, so that's $15,000/month, which I think is pretty good! Right now I'm at about 55 patients (been doing it for 3 months) and I only make myself available a couple hours a week, so pretty easy money to pay down debt and beef up my savings.

If you're thinking about doing it, it's helpful to have licenses in more than 1 state. I have 2 state licenses (I didn't originally have them because I wanted to do telemedicine). CA, NY, FL, and TX seem to be popular ones that a lot of companies want, but it really just depends on the company.

 

[namethatsmell]

If you're thinking about doing it, it's helpful to have licenses in more than 1 state. I have 2 state licenses (I didn't originally have them because I wanted to do telemedicine). CA, NY, FL, and TX seem to be popular ones that a lot of companies want, but it really just depends on the company.

This is definitely one of the ways to increase your income from tele. I have multiple licenses and it's resulted in higher offers from tele companies. On EM Docs several folks describe having licenses in like 40+ states. Too wild for me but they say it gives them negotiating powers with the companies to get their hourly pay to not too far off what they made doing EM.

 

[GeneralVeers]

Telemedicine is good if it's narrow in scope. I do it for a very specific disease process where I prescribe only 1-2 medications. The telemedicine consult is scheduled for 3 minutes, and pays $8. I typically have about 20 patients show up per hour, which is $160/hour. I review their labs which is another $20 per patient on top of that. After that it's a lab review every 3 months for another $20. My hourly after all the prescriptions signed is comparable to what I make per hour in EM.

So far it's been doing well. Would definitely not do any tele-medicine for general medicine, or ED medicine unless there was a hefty hourly guarantee. Dealing with telemedicine hypochondriac patients is even worse than in real life, because generally they have an online message center they can contact you from over and over.

 

[reca]

Telemedicine is good if it's narrow in scope. I do it for a very specific disease process where I prescribe only 1-2 medications. The telemedicine consult is scheduled for 3 minutes, and pays $8. I typically have about 20 patients show up per hour, which is $160/hour. I review their labs which is another $20 per patient on top of that. After that it's a lab review every 3 months for another $20. My hourly after all the prescriptions signed is comparable to what I make per hour in EM.

So far it's been doing well. Would definitely not do any tele-medicine for general medicine, or ED medicine unless there was a hefty hourly guarantee. Dealing with telemedicine hypochondriac patients is even worse than in real life, because generally they have an online message center they can contact you from over and over.

You make $560/hour?

 

[GeneralVeers]

You make $560/hour?

Yes, it fluctuates, but some prescriptions only take 30 seconds to write and document.

 

[reca]

Yes, it fluctuates, but some prescriptions only take 30 seconds to write and document.

No, I mean you make around $560/hour in EM? You said it was comparable to your EM rate.

 

[Vandalia]

I do it for a very specific disease process where I prescribe only 1-2 medications.

Let me guess? All of your patients are my age and gender?

For other telemedicine programs, how much flexibility are you given to refuse to see a patient? Now, obviously, as a physician you can tell every patient they need to go to the ED, but I am sure you would likely no longer be employed. Are you allowed to reject patients based on their reported symptoms before you even see them?

As an academic matter, it will be interesting to see what the "standard of care" for telemedicine will be? That of a urologist? An EM physician? A primary care "provider"? Or telemedicine-specific? A few years back our state supreme court decided that there was no "prison medicine" standard of care, and prison doctors are held to the same standard as the community at large. Something worth keeping an eye on if you do this.

The one thing that is EM specific is to remember that as an EM physician you are generally not the "deep pockets." If there is a significant judgement, they are going to go after the hospital. Here, if they have lawyers worth their salt, you are employed by an LLC with no assets, which means YOU are the "deep pockets."

 

[GeneralVeers]

Let me guess? All of your patients are my age and gender?

Possibly so. Though I don't know your age or gender. I think telemedicine only works if it's a very narrow scope of practice. If this is identified up front, then it's easy to refer any patient not within that scope to their primary care doctor or emergency department. For example you could have a telemedicine clinic where you review cholesteral labs, and patient's response to medications and any side effects. Any questions/complaints outside of that could be referred.

 

[TheSingularity]

This sounds pretty horrible