Telehealth in Hawaii

This item does not relate directly to adolescent substance abuse, but it does fit with our Project Advisory Board meeting in January 2008 on telehealth:

American Well, a Web service that puts patients face-to-face with doctors online, will be introduced in Hawaii on Jan 15.

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Patients use the service by logging on to participating health plans’ Web sites. Doctors hold 10-minute appointments, which can be extended for a fee, and can file prescriptions and view patients’ medical histories through the system. American Well is working with HealthVault, Microsoft’s electronic medical records service, and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, which scans patients’ medical history for gaps in their previous care and alerts doctors during their American Well appointment.

The Hawaiian health plan’s 700,000 members pay $10 to use the service. The insurer also offers the service to uninsured patients for $45. Health plans pay American Well a license fee per member and a transaction fee of about $2 each time a patient sees a doctor.

Hawaii is particularly well suited for online medicine because the islands are remote, it takes time to travel among them and it is difficult for the state to recruit doctors to rural areas, said Mike Stollar, vice president of marketing for the Hawaii Medical Service Association.