Joining the growing telehealth market is PlushCare, which touts its service as “virtual health concierge” and which offers virtual appointments from a group of pedigreed Stanford- and UCSF-educated doctors.
These appointments, each costing patient $45, are available the same day the request is made, and can be done by phone or via video on desktop. The user can pay with a credit card, or using an employer flexible spending account.
PlushCare can feed clinical data from the exams back into the records system of the patient’s primary care doctor.The service kicked off in California with expansion to other states coming next year. Right now, those using the service can benefit from PlushCare’s neat ability to feed clinical data from the exams back into the records system of the patient’s primary care doctor.
Another distinguishing feature of PlushCare is that the service doesn’t end when the video call is over. There’s no real time limit on calls, and patients can call back for another appointment free of charge if the problem couldn’t be fixed as a result of the original appointment. Moreover, there are follow-ups to the patient if a lab was ordered.
In other words, PlushCare is looking to build long-lasting relationships with patients, rather than just provide them with one-off services.
The company raised money from executives from Kodak, Splunk, Apple, and Jeff Jorgenson, the director of telemedicine at UCSF.
[Via: VentureBeat]