Restarting Telemedicine

In January 2022, I started working telemedicine on the side to prepare for my 3-month sabbatical. I ended up barely working telemedicine during my sabbatical because I was pretty busy. I then quit telemedicine in October 2022, because the pay structure changed from hourly to per patient. The platform wasn’t busy enough to see several patients per hour. So instead, you were technically “on call” and someone from the telemedicine company would text you if there was a patient waiting. This didn’t match with my standard of living so I ended up resigning. 

In 2023, when I took another 3 month sabbatical, I had more free time and sort of wished I had some per diem telemedicine work available. Since I was planning on taking November and December off for the holidays, I decided to apply for telemedicine work. I liked having the option to work a few hours a week if I wanted. Plus I wanted the option to work remotely in case I decided to live abroad while waiting for my boyfriend to get his US visa.

While in Colorado, I ended up finding a good telemedicine company to work for. I did the training on the weekends and picked up a few shifts to get familiar with the platforms. This company offered a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous visits, which I liked. Sync visits are video or phone visits. Async are messaging visits. The messaging visits are when the patient completes a questionnaire regarding a certain medical topic and you review their answers, message them for any clarifications, and then prescribe the medication. 

I was trained to work with 3 different companies on the platform. Initially I was a bit annoyed because each platform has their own guidelines to follow so it was time consuming to refer to the guidelines. For example, one company wants you to give a 90 day supply of medication without further refills while another company wants you to give a 30 day supply with 1 refill. Each company also has certain snippets you have to use during the visit, so you have to make sure you send the required snippets before, during, and after the visits. Eventually you get used to it and it doesn’t take too long. 

At first I was disappointed to learn how little they pay for the async visits. Depending on the company it can range from $6-10/async visit. The video sync visits pay pretty well at $20-27/visit. Eventually, you get used to doing the async visits that it literally can take 1 minute, so $6 per 1 minute of work is not bad. 

The nice part is you can just jump online and complete async visits whenever you want. In order to complete sync visits though, you have to schedule yourself ahead of time. I usually only schedule myself when there are incentives. For instance, on the weekends during busy hours the telemedicine company offers an extra $25-50/hour to sign up for shifts. So, I would get paid that hourly rate in addition to the per visit. Often this ends up being $100/hour.

Not bad to make $100/hour while in the comfort of your home. I am usually multi-tasking by reading, watching my show, or doing housework too. And I am happy to help patients get simple treatment for basic things like a UTI, yeast infection, or acne. The patients are very grateful and nice so it can be pretty rewarding. The video visits tend to be basic cold symptoms or rash. The async visits are usually chronic medication refills, ED, UTI, birth control, or herpes. 

So far it has been nice to make an extra few thousand dollars per month working telemedicine. I have been trying to use this income as “fun money”. Treating myself to things or others I normally wouldn’t. In 2024, I plan on spending a few months in Europe with my boyfriend again, so I will be glad to have the option to work telemedicine. This is great for when I want to be productive or keep up with my skills and make some extra cash to splurge. 

Sometimes I wonder why don’t I give up in person care and just do telemedicine because it is so easy…. I think if I ever come to the point that I do not want to travel for work anymore I would just transition to telemedicine part time.