This article is sponsored by one of the fastest-growing telehealth companies in America, Antidote Health.

If you’re struggling to afford or access more traditional means of health coverage, the question you should be asking is why NOT choose an online doctor consultation? Telemedicine is an ever-growing, ever-evolving, and ever-changing sector of healthcare, and understandably so.

A recent McKinsey and Company report extrapolated that the rate of using telehealth services has surged over 38 times higher than the rate they were used prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conversely, a separate McKinsey report from the year prior projected that over $250 billion of American healthcare spending could eventually be poured into virtually-enabled care.

These telehealth services include online pharmacies, which allow prescriptions to be filled and delivered to your door, online therapists, which can facilitate virtual counseling sessions via video, and even online doctors and primary care physicians.

Seeing a trusted online doctor offers its own unique set of perks, benefits, and advantages, and not only in the purely financial sense of cutting costs. In addition to affordability, an online doctor will afford you the additional conveniences of:

• Not needing to travel for your appointment
• Not worrying about the risks of transmitting infections
• Chronic condition management from home
• Easier access to medical records
• Saving time, as well as saving money

Telemedicine doctors are not without their limitations. If you’re in the midst of suffering from severe illness or injury, you should get yourself into a hospital waiting room ASAP. Obviously, certain medical problems can’t simply just be resolved through a computer screen. But for the problems and pet peeves that can be unpacked over a Wi-Fi connection, here’s why you should consider consulting a trusted online doctor, and here’s how you can find one in the first place.

Online Doctor Benefits

As we quickly touched on previously, there are a number of extraneous benefits to using an online doctor when applicable, even beyond lightening the load on your bottom line. In addition to enjoying more affordable healthcare costs and co-pays, patients using an online doctor provider will be able to enjoy:

• Access to specialists, no matter where they live: Even if a healthcare provider who specializes in treating your specific condition(s) isn’t available in your immediate zip code, you can still access care from just about any zip code.

• Access to insurance reimbursements: Besides improving healthcare access for the uninsured, a telehealth doctor’s services can be billed through Medicare, and now, through a multitude of private insurance networks.

• Access to quick, ongoing care: Telehealth doctor visits can be useful for managing chronic conditions, routinely monitoring symptoms on the fly, and in making early, preventative, potentially life-saving diagnoses of specific issues.

• Access to faster referrals: No more prolonged wait times at the pharmacy - patients using telehealth medicine can enjoy faster, more convenient, more streamlined, and more straightforward access to the prescription medications they need. 

• Access to doctors on vacations: Who wouldn’t love getting a quick virtual checkup by the sand?

In some regards, telemedicine has some limitations concerning access to treatments that can only be completed in person. Healthcare services that aren’t so attainable online would include treatments like:

• Bloodwork and urine samples
• Stethoscope examination
• Mammograms, pap smears, and sonograms
• Eye pressure exams
• Injury care

We would recommend consulting an in-person doctor for all of the above, but online doctors have been shown to be remarkably effective at covering all the bases they’re capable of covering. Here are some telling statistics courtesy of a Medical Economics survey:

• 93% of responding patients reported that they would be willing to use a telemedicine doctor to manage their prescriptions

• 91% of responding patients said that a telemedicine doctor would help them follow their wellness routines better

• Patients reported feeling overwhelming satisfaction with the conveniences and benefits offered by online doctors, including easy technology (69%), quick communication (57%), quick online scheduling capabilities (47%), and easy appointment availability

Whether you’re fully insured, underinsured, uninsured, or somewhere in between, telemedicine doctors can make for remarkably useful assets in closing the inequities and accessibility gaps faced by far too many patients under our current healthcare system.

Which Online Doctor App Is Best?

Sesame Care is a well-rounded, all-in-one telemedicine doctor provider, geared toward offering affordable coverage regardless of one’s insurance coverage or budget. It also enables you to effectively self-manage medical records, documents, and notes, including fast access to real (not fake) doctor's notes for work!

That said, whoever can serve as your ideal online doctor is ultimately dependent on your own health needs and personal interests as a patient.

Keep this in mind when searching for your ideal online doctor. If you don’t know where to start looking for one, give our provider portal a quick look to narrow down the best online doctors.