27 Aug The Limits of Online Prescribing, and Why They Exist
Telehealth moved from the edge of American medicine to the middle of it in a few years. Video visits, secure messaging, and app-based clinics now handle a large share of routine care. Most of that care ends the same way an office visit does, with a prescription sent to a pharmacy. The rules behind that prescription are less familiar. They come from state medical boards, federal drug law, pharmacy regulations, and each clinician's own judgment. Independent comparison sites such as RatedByPatients exist because those rules sit in fine print, not on the homepage of a clinic. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, telehealth prescribing flexibilities introduced during the COVID-19 public health emergency have been subject to ongoing regulatory review, and the rules governing remote prescribing of controlled substances continue to evolve. Understanding them helps patients work out what a virtual visit can realistically do.
[caption id="attachment_75751" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Photo by Vitaly Gariev[/caption]