Kaiser Permanente Northwest members can now see an urgent care doctor without leaving their homes.
Kaiser announced last week it’s now offering members the option of video urgent care visits for no copay.
“When people are sick or injured, it can be hard for them to get to a medical office, and particularly during flu season, they may want to avoid sitting in a waiting room with others who are sick,” Dr. Rahul Rastogi, chief operations officer of Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s physician group, said in a news release.
Members can schedule an urgent care video appointment on the Kaiser website, www.kp.org. The video visits with the doctor can be conducted using a smartphone, laptop or desktop computer with a video camera.
The providers performing the visits will have access to members’ electronic medical records and will document the visit details in the electronic record.
Urgent care providers can also refer patients to a specialty doctor, order X-rays and tests and prescribe medication.
Kaiser members can also schedule urgent care telephone appointments.
Video and telephone visits are ideal for nonemergency conditions, such as colds and flu, allergies and asthma, rashes and sunburns, bug bites, minor cuts, minor breaks, sprains and urinary tract infections.
“Like our other virtual care offerings, the goal of urgent care video visits is to make it easier for people to get care for themselves and their families,” Rastogi said in the news release. “We don’t want people to delay or avoid seeking care simply because they can’t make the trip to the doctor.”
The video visits are the latest in Kaiser’s collection of virtual care offerings, which include making appointments online, emailing and sending photos to providers, telephone visits with providers, online access to lab tests and doctor’s notes, reordering prescriptions online and specialty video visits.
Kaiser Permanente has about 100,000 members in Clark County.
