Sometimes finding the right doctor for a patient can seem like a dating service – there's a match for you out there … somewhere.
That's especially true of patients with a rare or complex medical issue, and the reasoning behind a new mHealth service that looks to connect consumers with the specialists who can best treat them. That might mean arranging a diagnosis from afar or setting up an appointment.
Grand Rounds is what Owen Tripp, its CEO and co-founder, calls an "eHealth" company – one that specializes in expert health. Launched a little over two years ago, the company markets its Virtual Clinic as "access to healthcare experts who might be geographically unavailable to the average patient." Grand Rounds collects the necessary information from the patient, organizes it in the cloud and passes it on to its network of specialists. A doctor in the Grand Rounds network can log on, review the information, then generate a response that's passed back to the patient within 72 hours.
Building on that concept, Grand Rounds recently introduced Office Visits, a service that helps people identify the best physicians who could treat their condition within the same geographical area, then sets up the appointment. Like the Virtual Clinic offering, Office Visits is marketed to self-insured employers, and consumers are charged $200 per Office visit.
Tripp points out that the nation's healthcare system is currently designed to "harness the asynchronous qualities" of healthcare – a dumbed-down approach that doesn't help the patient with a rare or complex health issue. Furthermore, physicians who deal with such complex cases don't have the time to meet with new patients, who might be located next door or across the country.
But they could – for a consultation fee "that's more than they would be reimbursed for an office visit" – review a case during their free time. And if it's guaranteed that they'd be dealing with a patient who needs their specific expertise, a physician could find time in his schedule for an office visit.
"We need a tool that allows an expert to look at a patient when he or she has the time," Tripp said, noting that the Grand Rounds network now comprises some 25,000 specialists, each recommended by another doctor. "They want to do this. They don't have the time to see everyone, but they know they have the unique skills" to help more people.
Among Grand Rounds' network of specialists is Stephen Paget, an internationally recognized rheumatologist based in New York City who's been treating patients for some 45 years. "Patients deserve to be taken care of with the best minds and technology," Paget said. "I love being connected with new patients and taking on complicated cases that require true expertise."
Paget told mHealth News that Grand Rounds contacts him with a case every two or three months, and he has no issues with being contacted outside normal office hours. He said the cases give him a chance to help patients who need it the most, and Office Visits ensures that those who do need his expertise can get in to see him.
At the other end of the spectrum is Don Sommers, a Phoenix resident who was diagnosed with peripheral artery disease and underwent a leg angioplasty in 2013, at which time the physician said he couldn't break through the blockage in his leg and installed a stent. This was followed by a left leg bypass surgery in July 2013, which failed one week later. He was then told that he'd eventually lose his leg.
Sommers said he contacted Grand Rounds (he had learned of the service through his son's business associate) and was referred, via Office Visits, to Venkatesh Ramaiah, a Tucson-area vascular physician. The two met on Oct. 31, 2013, and Ramaiah performed a left leg angioplasty the next day. Ramaiah broke through the blockage, and was able to restore about 60 percent of the blood flow to Sommers' leg.
"I like to tell people I went 'from zero to 60 in less than two hours,'" Sommers said. "I immediately had a warm lower left leg and foot. My left foot had been cold and numb for months. I also no longer had foot pain waking me up several times every night and forcing me to walk around to get blood circulating in my foot. I was now able to walk without calf and foot pain as long as I did not overly exert myself."
Tripp says consumers generally don't know enough about medicine to pick the right doctor, and will rely on Google, Yelp, Facebook or past experiences and end up selecting a generalist who may be a good doctor but isn't the right one to treat them. By allowing Grand Rounds to handle the search, he said, consumers will be directed to the clinician who can help them the most, and clinicians in turn will not only be reimbursed for their expertise, but will be sure that the patients they do treat are the ones who they can and should be treating.
If there's one problem to the Grand Rounds platform, it may lie in the name. Tripp admitted that, at times, it's been confused with the Ground Round chain restaurant.
But with a recipe for success, who would complain?
