Legal Limits of Telemedicine

Telemedicine is the use of electronic communication technology to provide healthcare services to patients, and it is a growing part of the medical landscape. Theoretically, medical aesthetic practices could stand to benefit a great deal from using telemedicine. However, the laws that govern telemedicine are still evolving, so medical spa owners and operators should familiarize themselves with the legal issues surrounding the practice before they decide to give it a try.
Conceivably, telemedicine could alter the way that initial examinations are conducted in medical aesthetic facilities. Most states require a licensed healthcare professional—a physician, a physician’s assistant, or a nurse practitioner—to conduct a face-to-face initial exam prior to the administration of medical services. As a result, compliant medical aesthetic practices need to have at least one licensed professional on site at all times. But what if you could simply have a healthcare professional on call instead of in the office all the time? That’s the prospective advantage of telemedicine. Ideally, a healthcare professional could conduct examinations over Skype or FaceTime, and the practice would not have to pay a premium to have a licensed professional on site all day, every day.
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