FAQs

A second look at your case may help to:

• Clarify the cause of persistent or new symptoms.
• Reassure you that your working diagnoses and treatment plan are correct and appropriate.
• Adjust your working diagnosis and treatment plan.
• Better inform a prognosis.
• Educate you.
• Provide you with peace of mind regarding your own healthcare.
• Enable your physicians to reach a sub-specialist easily to discuss your care, if you wish.

You might want to consider getting a second opinion if you feel that your medical exam was not reviewed by the right expert. For instance, did you know that about 60% of radiology exams aren’t interpreted by the most qualified specialist? Take brain MRI scans, for example. While it makes sense that these should be read by a neuroradiologist, it's actually rare for them to be. Instead, many exams are read by general radiologists, not those who have advanced training in a specific area.

If you want to make sure that a sub-specialist reviews your exams, contact us.
If you want to ensure your exam is reviewed by a sub-specialist, we can help. We’ll connect you with a physician who has the right expertise for your case. Our experienced specialists will thoroughly review your case, take the time to understand all the details, and provide thoughtful, well-informed opinions. We’ll also communicate our findings clearly with you and your doctor, if you’d like.

We can work directly with patients, parents of minor patients, and legal representatives of patients such as family members who have legal durable healthcare power of attorney.  We follow patient confidentiality-protecting protocols.

Here’s how the process works for our patients:

When you request an initial consultation, MD For Patients will arrange a teleconference between you and our intake staff. The focus of that consultation is to understand your questions, medical needs, and history. After your initial consultation, we will custom-build a specialist team and treatment plan tailored to meet your medical needs. You will have an opportunity to review our proposed treatment plan so that you can make an informed determination about moving forward with your assigned world-class specialist. 

The goal of the entire process is to help you.

One of the most important founding principles of MD For Patients is to improve each patient’s understanding of their own health. This is why, throughout the process, patients are encouraged to ask any questions they may have.

This includes asking questions after the patient’s tele-conference or phone call with one of our physicians. We know that often patients can’t think of all of their followup questions during an initial consultation. Patients are often too stressed, processing all the new and important information they are receiving, to think through the ramifications of the information immediately – and then come up with additional questions later.  This is a completely normal, common phenomenon that occurs after a patient or parent has had some time to process new information – particularly when the information is as critical and personal to them as is healthcare.

Because there is no third-party payer involved, and no employer-mandated productivity metric to meet, the physician consultant can spend as much time as needed to gather the information they need to consider the case fully, and the patient can experience one or more un-rushed discussions with the physician consultant in order to understand the opinions and recommendations of the physician.Providers at MD For Patients are committed to communicating their findings and opinions directly to patients with dignity, compassion, transparency, and honesty, while encouraging patients to ask follow-up questions immediately or later, once the patient has had time to consider the information that has been conveyed to them, and to recall questions they meant to ask, or to ask new questions they did not think to ask at the first visit.

At MD for Patients, we encourage you to communicate with your physician consultants directly, because better communication means a better outcome.

Communication problems including inaccurate and incomplete histories frequently cause diagnostic errors.  When patients try to discuss their imaging examination findings and reports with an original interpreting radiologist, even when they have helpful additional information for the radiologist to take into consideration, they are usually unable to reach or communicate directly with that radiologist.  Often, even their physicians who ordered the exams in the first place are unable to discuss findings with the original interpreting radiologist or obtain a consultation or second opinion for clarification, or to update the radiologist with new data. Information that came to light after the original interpretation was reported may not be taken into account – and the report may never be updated to reflect it.

Patients submit payment to the practice directly for all services.

By removing insurers and healthcare corporations from the doctor/patient relationship, and returning to a model wherein patients are customers and physicians treat patients with the patience, compassion, and dignity with which they would themselves want to be treated, MD For Patients raises the bar on the process of medical diagnosis. Our goals are improved diagnostic accuracy, clearer and more readily available physician/patient communication, collaborative relationships between patients and physicians, and improved collaboration and communication between physician colleagues themselves.  We focus on the needs of the patient and on providing each patient with the most accurate professional assessment and advice possible.