The “I See My Doc!” Story
COVID-19 impacted us too. Dr. King and the office team had either small children at home; elderly parents or were at high risk for bad outcome from COVID-19. To be safe for all, we decided to close our office for in clinic appointments. However, we were concerned with this change on how to continue providing quality care to our patients. Why? Many of our patients needed routine monthly or bimonthly visits. We had patients who were fragile and needed monthly check-ins. We had patients who needed monthly medication refills for PrEP or for gender hormone therapy and they needed routine testing. We also wanted to help care for patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19 or were at high risk for COVID-19 due to recent exposure. Our initial answer was to create a dedicated COVID-19 hotline. Patients who were diagnosed or thought that they had COVID were directed to Dr. King for same day appointments. After several trials, we found a telemedicine platform that worked for us and started seeing our patients daily, including some nights and weekends.
As with all changes, we encountered several problems: 1) not everyone was happy with conducting a televisit; 2) not everyone had the bandwith or a smart phone to be able to conduct a televisit; 3) conducting a televisit was not intuitive- help was needed. To facilitate the televisit experience, we hired a telemedicine coordinator to navigate our patients and their families or caretakers through the televisit process. We recognized that pictures or visuals would help immensely; therefore, we created “ I See My Doc. Com”.
“I See My Doc” initially was designed to merely provide instructions to help you get on board for your televisit. However, we quickly saw that I See My Doc could be expanded from COVID and primary urgent care but to include primary care and HIV specialty prevention and treatment. Besides COVID urgent care, we have treated rashes, colds, referred people to the hospital, conducted nursing home visits and provided return to work appointments. We have also proudly increased access to sexually transmitted infection treatment in Los Angeles County. We have continued to treat newly diagnosed and existing HIV and Hepatitis C and B patients. We have expanded our availability for patients in need of PrEP and PEP. We are currently working on collaborations with a private same day pharmacy and with the “ Take Me Home” program, that provides free home HIV testing kits. We have been happy that we have been able to have televisits to continue our hormone replacement therapy programs and our buprenorphine treatment to ensure no prior patient was at a loss for their medications. Jamie Mok, our nutritionist was able to expand her nutrition consults for existing and new patients. In short, we have been able to provide high quality comprehensive primary and specialty care via virtual appointments or televisits to our patients without closing our practice. Is it perfect. No, but we are constantly reassessing to make your experience the best that we can.
So welcome to I See My Doc.com. Feel free to look at the video testimonials from Dr. King, and our patients who benefited from telemedicine. Review our instructions on how to prepare for your televisit. Play close attention to the instructions on how to access our telemedicine program to make your visit satisfactory . Don’t forget to answer the survey at the end, so that we can know who we are doing.
We will see you soon.
William D. King MD JD AAHIVS FCLM.