It a common frustration for patients: During an office visit with your primary care physician, the doc advices you to see a specialist. But then you're forced to wait weeks for the appointment to see the specialist. A new telehealth service available to patients in Hawaii could have patients elsewhere envious.Hawaii Medical Service Association--the Blue Cross Blue Shield plan of Hawaii--is the first health plan in the U.S. planning to deploy a new telehealth program unveiled by American Well, a provider of online health care services.

By using American Well's new web-based, VoIP-enabled Online Care Team Edition, primary care physicians caring for patients in their exam rooms can on-demand access consults with remote medical specialists, such as dermatologists, cardiologists, and others for whom patients frequently have long waits for appointments.

So, if that primary care doctor is suspicious that a patient's complaints could indicate a more serious issue that needs further evaluation by a specialist, the primary care doc could enlist help immediately by connecting with a remote expert who can take a look at the patient's lab and imaging results, as well as help evaluate physical findings.

Another new related service--Online Medical Home--also allows primary care doctors to take on the role of care coordinator for a patient with more complex needs. The primary care physician can use the American Well telehealth services to enlist the consultations of multiple specialists from their remote locations.

The telehealth services that are being supported for by Hawaii's Blue Cross Blue Shield members are surely something that can help patients who might otherwise be forced to wait a long time for office appointments with scarce specialists in the region.

These latest specialist telehealth services supported by HMSA are in addition to other virtual medical consultations from American Well that HMSA began offering to its members more than a year ago.

In case you're wondering how doctors are reimbursed for these new services--American Well says the primary care physician bills the payer for an office visit, since the patient is with doc in the exam room.

The consulting specialist gets paid for the Online Care visit according to the reimbursement set by the health plan.

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