If you’re a Rush University Medical Center patient with a low-acuity condition, you can get a physician’s diagnosis from the comfort of your own home. And it doesn’t even require a video consultation.
The new service, called Rush SmartExam, gives patients the opportunity to have an “electronic house call” with a Rush physician.
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To use SmartExam, patients log into rush.smartexam.com. They’re then prompted to answer between 25 and 75 questions about their symptoms and in some cases, upload a photo of their condition.
Using the patient’s responses, an algorithm comes up with a potential diagnosis. The patient’s answers and the algorithm are sent to a physician at the Chicago, Illinois-based medical center, who picks the best treatment option and sends the patient a link to a post-visit summary.
The e-house call, which is not payable by health insurance, costs $30. If the physician prescribes medication, the patient can pick it up at a pharmacy of their choice.
Though Rush SmartExam is convenient, it is limited to a certain group of patients. To use the service, patients must be 18 or older, have an established primary care physician at Rush and have seen that physician within the past year. These requirements were set on purpose as a way to encourage patients to use the Rush network. “Rush has been thinking about how to offer more convenient options to patients and help patients stay within the Rush network of providers,” Amanda Tosto, director of population health and practitioner faculty in Rush’s department of health systems management, told MedCity in a phone interview.
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Rush SmartExam is also limited to patients with low-acuity conditions including acne, the flu, sore throat, cold, sunburn, sinus pain, rashes, bladder infection and ear pain.
Although Rush sees the value in video-based platforms for telemedicine (particularly through its TeleStroke Network), Tosto said Rush believes video technology isn’t necessary to treat the low-acuity conditions offered through SmartExam. “In order to treat these low-acuity medical conditions, we don’t feel video is required,” she said. “Video can be a barrier to entry to patients. There are low barriers to entering [Rush SmartExam] for patients and we like it that way.”
To offer the service to patients, Rush has contracted with Bright.md, the company that owns SmartExam. Rush learned about SmartExam through its membership in the AVIA Innovator Network, Tosto said. “[AVIA] pairs up member organizations like Rush with technological companies and creates collaboratives focused on specific areas,” she said. “SmartExam was highlighted within the collaborative.”
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock, Getty Images
