It wasn’t all that long ago you needed to see your doctor in-person before he or she would fill out a medication prescription for whatever ailed you. You would then drive to your local pharmacy, hand the script to the pharmacist on duty, and either wait the fifteen or thirty minutes it took to fill the order, or you came back later to pick it up. The word hassle comes to mind.
But now, because of the internet, you can order your medication and indefinite prescriptions online. All it takes is a few minutes. According to a recent report by Onlinedoctor, you have lots of telemedicine opportunities these days, and along with them, online prescriptions.
If you choose to see a doctor online, he will write you a script and email it directly to your local pharmacy. You can either pick up your medicine or the pharmacy will deliver it to your front door. No more hassle.
Is it Possible to Get a Prescription without Consulting With Your Doctor?
Says founder and CEO of GeniusRx, which is an online pharmacy located in all 50 U.S. states, if you need a prescription, it requires being written by a licensed doctor who works in the state in which you reside. That means that, technically speaking, you can’t get a prescription without consulting with your doctor.
However, you can get a script without having to visit your doctor in person now that telemedicine is here. In lots of cases all that’s required for a doctor to prescribe a medication is a video conference.
In some situations, all that’s required is a simple phone call with your nurse or doctor and a prescription will be sent to the pharmacy. Rules regarding prescriptions along with what type of drug you are seeking apply. The age of the patient is also taken into consideration. In other words, you can’t be sixteen and ask your doctor over the phone for a Valium script.
Is It Possible for Telemedicine Doctors to Prescribe Medication?
The many telehealth apps available today have made remote meetings with your doctor or registered nurse a reality. In many cases, you no longer need to step foot inside a doctor’s office. During the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 100 percent of doctor’s appointments were conducted virtually, and in most cases medication was prescribed and automatically called into the pharmacy.
Exceptions exist if, for instance, the medication the patient is looking for is considered a controlled substance. However, according to Onlinedoctor, the Drug Enforcement Administration, or the DEA, allowed some controlled substances to be prescribed via telemedicine during the height of the pandemic. Those new rules are said to not have reverted back.
If your health issue is less risky, you might not even need to speak with a doctor at all. You can instead conduct a two-way HIPAA compliant chat. This occurs when a patient is provided a set of questions which are then answered to the best of the patient’s ability.
If, after reviewing the answers, the physician isn’t satisfied with the information provided, a follow-up telemedicine chat might be required. It all comes down to state rules and regulations on the matter.
Is it Possible to Order Prescriptions without Consulting with Your Doctor at All?
The head of GeniusRx says that your primary care physician is allowed to forward a script to your pharmacy to refill an existing, ongoing order such as that you might need for high cholesterol or high blood pressure. You doctor does not need to speak or communicate with you for this to happen.
If the time comes when the number of refills you were allowed have been used up, you will need to see your primary care doctor via telemedicine to renew them. Or, he might ask you to come in to the office for some updated tests and blood work.
But for the most part telehealth is all that’s required for an ongoing script to be renewed. Nowadays there are many digital pharmacies and platforms that embrace the direct-to-consumer method. These platforms are engineered on behalf of individual consumers who are looking to save precious cash on medications that are normally required for chronic conditions.
Even medications for erectile dysfunction, birth control, testosterone loss, or hair loss can be delivered to a customer on a direct-to-consumer basis. All a customer has to do is fill out an online medical form to be approved for the script.
