Mount Nittany Physicians Making Virtual House Calls

If the coronavirus pandemic has made you a little bit nervous to venture out to your doctor’s office, you are not alone. You’re also in luck. Physicians in the Mount Nittany Health system now have the ability to make a new kind of house call, coming to patients digitally through telehealth appointments.

The process is simple. Existing patients of Mount Nittany Physician Group first call their provider to see if a telehealth visit might be an appropriate option for their appointment.

If it is deemed appropriate, all the patient will need is a smartphone or a computer with a camera, high-speed internet access and log-in information for their patient portal — an online account where patients can access things like upcoming appointments, lab results and billing information.

At the scheduled appointment time, patients simply log in to their patient portal and click a check-in button to begin their telehealth visit. The physician and patient will be able to see and hear each other throughout the visit.

Dr. Pete Roy, of Mount Nittany Physician Group Neurology, began using telehealth with his patients in late March, he said, and is now averaging eight to 10 telehealth appointments per day.

“People love this,” he said. “It works very well for follow up visits, particularly. I think this is a wonderfully convenient way to practice medicine.”

Renee Womer, of Howard, recently participated in a telehealth appointment with Roy for her two 22-year-old daughters.

The twins, disabled since birth, both have tracheostomy tubes and are at high risk for infections. They regularly see Roy for seizure disorders, but both require wheelchairs and a lot of medical equipment, making even short trips to the doctor’s office quite cumbersome.

“There are a lot of reasons for us not to take them out, especially now,” Womer said. “So when we were scheduled to see Dr. Roy in April, they called to ask if we would be interested in doing telehealth for this visit … The visit took about 45 minutes, and he could see the girls. For our situation, it worked really well. It was a very positive experience, and I will gladly do another (telehealth visit) in six months.”

Not every appointment lends itself well to a telehealth appointment. Often it is necessary for a doctor to be able to see and examine a patient in person, including for new patient visits and for conditions that can’t easily be assessed through a two-way video. However, as a neurologist, Roy has found many situations for which telehealth is a sufficient alternative.

“With things like psychiatry and neurology, just by talking with people you can assess things pretty well,” he explained. “You can assess their mental status, assess their speech, their thinking, their memory; that’s easy to do over the telehealth. For follow-up patients, for things like going over medications, this works really well.”

Telehealth visits are billed just like in-person visits, and currently are covered by most private insurance companies as well as by Medicare, Roy said. That coverage was granted by the federal government in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, and Roy hopes it continues even after the pandemic passes.

“We’re hoping this won’t be temporary. I think this is so efficient and so convenient for so many people that it would be really a shame for this to go away once the worst of this crisis is over,” he said.

On May 28, Mount Nittany Health also began offering telehealth emergency care, with virtual visits available around the clock.

“That, to me, is a game-changer,” Roy said. “So often, you’re not sure: should I go to the ER or not? This helps make it easier for people to make that decision.

To learn more about telehealth at Mount Nittany Physician Group, visit mountnittany.org/telehealth. To start a virtual emergency room appointment or to learn more about telehealth emergency care, visit mountnittany.org/virtualER.