Blue Shield of California is waiving out-of-pocket costs for its members to access health services through Teladoc in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The change will apply to its commercial plan members, including individual and family plans. Blue Shield of California will waive the fees through May 31.
“Our top priority is the health and safety of our members, our employees and promoting public health,” Blue Shield of California Executive Vice President Dr. Terry Gilliland said in a news release. “As we continue to closely monitor the Covid-19 situation, we believe making telemedicine more readily available is the right thing to do. It’s important that we reduce direct human contact as much as possible as we assess cases initially. We believe in testing outside of medical facilities – either with temporary facilities adjacent to existing healthcare facilities, or via drive through testing to help us reduce possible spread of the virus inside a medical facility.”
Other insurers have taken similar strides to minimize exposure to the virus. Aetna members under CVS Health will also have access to telemedicine visits with no copay for the next 90 days.
As more patients pick up the message to turn to telehealth first, Teladoc and other telemedicine services have seen a significant influx of users. On Friday, Teladoc said that it had experienced unprecedented daily visit volume, providing about 100,000 virtual medical visits last week. Compared to the prior week, it saw a 50% increase in the demand for its services. Many of those patients were people using its service for the first time.
“We are seeing more patients and more of those patients are experiencing upper respiratory issues,” Teladoc Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lew Levy said in a news release. “We have the unique ability to immediately connect with the CDC and other government agencies, to add the right screening tools and clinical quality protocols to our system, and most importantly, to keep patients – particularly those most at risk with underlying health conditions – out of care settings where they can face exposure.”
Photo credit: Teladoc
