FAQs

A second look at your patient’s 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 and your patient.
• Provide you with peace of mind regarding your patient’s healthcare.
• Enable you to reach a sub-specialist easily.

You may want to get a second opinion due to suboptimal exam distribution, or the phenomenon in which the most qualified expert is usually not the interpreter of an exam. For example, roughly 60% of radiology exams are not read by physicians with added qualifications in the relevant sub-specialty of radiology.

You’d think that all MRI scans of the brain, for instance, are interpreted by neuroradiologists. That would make sense, but it is not the norm. In fact it is the exception in modern United States healthcare for a brain MRI to be interpreted by a fellowship-trained neuroradiologist. Moreover, only a minority of diagnostic medical imaging examinations in the United States today are actually interpreted by sub-specialized radiologists. Most are interpreted by general radiologists – not by radiologists with fellowship training in the sub-specialty relevant to the case at hand.

If you want to make sure that a sub-specialist reviews your patients’ exams, contact us.

We will match your case to a physician consultant with training and experience well-suited to your case. Our physicians are experienced experts who can gather complete and accurate information about each case and then conduct a thorough, comprehensive case review. We provide un-hurried, thoughtful, well-informed second opinions and recommendations, and then communicate with patients – and their physicians, if desired – regarding the basis for our opinions.

Here’s how the process works for collaborating physicians:

When you request a consultation, MD For Patients will arrange a teleconference between you, the consultant, and/or the patient to understand the questions, the patient’s medical needs and history. Our consultant will review any medical records your office provides prior to the consultation. Our consultant will provide a written summary to include in your patient’s record.

The goal of the entire process is to make specialist care accessible to you, so you can have the information you need to provide the best care possible to your patients.

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. The same is true for their physicians.

Our consultants remain available as needed for follow-up consultations as new questions arise.

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. The local physician and 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 with dignity, compassion, transparency, and honesty, while encouraging patients to ask follow-up questions immediately or later. Sometimes, after the patient has had time to consider the information conveyed to them, they recall questions they meant to ask or develop new questions they did not think to ask at the first visit.

At MD for Patients, we encourage you to communicate with the 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.

Discuss the options directly with us when you refer a patient. Depending on your practice model, the practice may engage with MD For Patients under an agreement wherein the practice is responsible for timely payment with favorable terms. In other practice models, the patient submits payment 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.