CASE STUDY

Summary: 

Learn how licensed physicians on Rocket Doctor are using Remmie for tele-otolaryngology. This is improving patient access and improving diagnostic confidence at sites of care embedded within nearby local pharmacies, reducing travel time, delivering immediate easy access to care, and mitigating costly trips to urgent/emergency care. 

The Problem

Rocket Doctor is a Digital health platform and market-place operating across Canada, California and the Pacific Northwest. Rocket Doctor enables MDs to care for more than 180,000 patients with over 250,000 virtual appointments delivered. They also partner with major Canadian pharmacies, including National chains, as the embedded site of care clinics similar to vaccination clinics often found in retail pharmacies. In virtual clinics, Rocket Doctor was looking for solutions to enable patients to connect with MDs on the platform while at home or from retail pharmacy clinic locations who may need adjuncts to standard telemedicine visits. Remote patient monitoring devices, including advanced medical hardware, were identified to expand the capacity of virtual care providers, giving them greater confidence to practice medicine on the platform providing care to a growing number of patients, many of which may be miles from healthcare facilities. Rocket Doctor set out to create an efficient remote telehealth model to connect a centralized base of primary care and emergency MDs on the platform with patients who visit these local pharmacies for ENT conditions and services.  

The Solution

Rocket Doctor is an example of a straightforward site of care implementation. Patients walk in or make appointments at their local pharmacy virtual care stations, a medical assistant virtually connects the patient with physicians on Rocket Doctor who would lead the exam and evaluate the patients' conditions utilizing Remmie and sophisticated medical devices when needed to enhance care. Many of the conditions diagnosed result in a prescription, which the patient can readily fulfill at the pharmacy, right then and there.  

"It's about reducing friction. By bringing care to the patient at the site of care through platform-enabled technologies like Remmie, we can meet the evolution of patient needs where they are. In this way, we can power MDs to have greater confidence in their diagnosis, and deliver improved patient experience with Rocket Doctor."

William Cherniak, MD MPH
Emergency Physician, CEO & Founder of Rocket Doctor

The Outcome

Rocket Doctor initially deployed Remmie Health at 6 retail pharmacy locations with care stations across Canada. Rocket Doctor has delivered improved patient experience and positive clinical outcomes by meeting the needs of patients who walk into their local pharmacy care stations for ENT conditions. Tele-otalarygology also allows MDs on Rocket Doctor and the pharmacy site of care to schedule more patient visits, increased patient volume, because it was more challenging to address ENT patient needs prior to integration of Remmie Health.  As a result, it has fulfilled higher turnover of prescriptions on site, when appropriate for high-quality and comprehensive patient care.  Rocket Doctor can now provide ENT screening, while M.D.s can gain greater confidence in their diagnosis utilizing objective clinical data.