Legal Research

Online Services Let Patients Seek a Second Opinion

A recent Newsweek article discusses online second opinion services which offer a patient a consultation from a medical specialist based on the patient’s medical record which he has sent to the specialist via either fax, snail mail, or e-mail. The cost averages $500 to $1000. After the patient pays for the service, it takes about 2 weeks for him to receive the second opinion online.

One service, Partners Online Specialty Consultations (POSC), has been online for nine years.  Since then about 5,000 patients in the U.S. have used it. The other “major” second opinion service, based at the Cleveland Clinic, started about 8 years ago and has served about 1,700 patients. Johns Hopkins Medicine, another player, has done only about 50 consults but hopes to expand their service in the future. And the Mayo Clinic is planning on getting into the second opinion “business” shortly.

Not all second opinion services require that the patient’s own physician participate – the Cleveland Clinic “delivers” their consultation directly to the patient and to his doctor.   On the other hand, POSC “delivers” their’s to the patient’s physician only.  In either case, the opinion is posted on a “secure” website where either the patient and/or the patient’s doctor can view it. Which brings up the problem of security and privacy of the patient’s online medical report, which I have blogged about in the past and won’t blather on about here.

Another problem, besides the security issue, is that most insurance companies do not cover online second opinions. Cigna does cover them but for “certain” patients only. With the economy as unstable as it is today, I would expect that a lot of patients will be less willing to pay $1000 out of their own pocket when they either have lost or are worried about losing their job.  And that’s assuming that they have an extra $1000 to spare anyway.

Having been in the medical field in my “previous life” (Medical Technologist in a hospital Blood Bank for 16 years), I am a big fan of second opinions.  So once I am convinced that an individual’s online personal health record is secure and once more insurance companies agree to cover the cost of these online second opinions, I think this will be an excellent patient service.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).