https://mailchi.mp/4b683d764cf3/the-weekly-gist-november-18-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

Telemedicine is supposed to make consumers’ lives easier, right? One of us had the opposite experience when managing a sick kid this week. My 14-year-old has been sick with a bad respiratory illness for over a week. We saw her pediatrician in-person, testing negative for COVID (multiple times), flu, and strep. Over the week, her symptoms worsened, and rather than haul her back to the doctor, we decided to give our health plan’s telemedicine service a try. To the plan’s credit, the video visit was easy to schedule, and we were connected to a doctor within minutes. He agreed that symptoms and timeline warranted an antibiotic, and said he was sending the prescription to our pharmacy as we wrapped up the call. 
 
Here’s where the challenges began. We went to our usual CVS a few hours later, and they had no record of the prescription. (Note to telemedicine users: write down the name of your provider. The pharmacy asked to search for the script by the doctor’s name, which I didn’t remember—and holding up the line of a dozen other customers to fumble with the app seemed like the wrong call.)

We left and contacted the telemedicine service to see if the prescription had been transmitted, and after a half hour on hold, were finally transferred to pharmacy support. It turns out that the telemedicine service transmits their prescriptions via “e-fax”, so it was difficult to confirm if the pharmacy had received it. Not to be confused with e-prescribing, e-fax is literally an emailed image of a prescription, with none of the safeguards and communication capabilities of true electronic prescribing. 

The helpful service representative kindly offered to call the pharmacy and placed us on hold—only to get a message that the pharmacy was closed for lunch and not accepting calls! Several hours later, which included being on hold for 75 minutes (!!!) with our CVS, my daughter finally got her medication. 

Despite the slick app and teleconferencing system, the operations behind the virtual visit still relied on the very analog processes of phone trees and faxes—which created a level of irritation that rivaled trying to land Taylor Swift tickets for the same kid. It was a stark reminder of how far healthcare has to go to deliver a truly digital, consumer-centered experience.