03/20/2020
Dear Patients,
The Commissioner of Public Health, Dr Stack, has informed healthcare providers to do their utmost to reduce patient exposure while maintaining access and care to their patients. For that reason, Medicare has temporarily waived their limitations on Tele-Health visits and it is expected that commercial insurances will do the same. Practically, that means that:
1. All non-essential visits such as Annual Physicals and wellness visits will be postponed for a few weeks.
2. Most of the treatment continuation visits will take place via our Tele-Health app Medici. (Keep receipts since there is a strong indication that insurance companies might reimburse the patients by insurance once coding has been established.)
3. Some new treatments that do not necessitate a physical examination can be also started via Tele-Health.
4. The DEA has temporarily waived the requirement for face-to-face visits for schedule II-V drugs. This means that all of our patients who have quarterly follow ups for these schedule drugs can have their visit via the Tele-Health Medici app. Electronic prescribing for these schedule drugs is still not set up but we are working on that as well. For now we will have curb-side script pickup, just call the office when you arrive.
5. We will still be open for acute visits that necessitate a physical examination and/or testing. For those patients, we have implemented the procedures of car check in, car-to-room direct access, separation of sick and healthy rooms, and frequent daily surface scrubbing.
Therefore, the majority of health visits in the near future will be done via Tele-Health, however we are still guided by the rules of practicing. This means that we still cannot write medications or send referrals for conditions that we have not evaluated. Also, if your medication has been last evaluated outside of the recommended timeline for your particular medication, continuation of therapy will necessitate an evaluation through Tele-Health. We are granting a 30 day emergency refill for patients who are barely outside of the recommended timeline for a follow up and whose medication is not a controlled substance.
For any additional questions, please contact the office via phone or patient portal.
Town Family Doctor