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Virtual Visits

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When you don’t feel well, getting to the doctor’s office can be a challenge. With Virtual Visits, talk to a doctor whenever, wherever from a mobile device* or computer without an appointment or the hassle of leaving home.

Doctors can diagnose and treat a wide range of non-emergency medical conditions such as colds and rashes 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week.

From a desktop or mobile device:

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Accessible and Convenient*  No more waiting rooms. No need to book an appointment. Talk to a doctor by video from home, office or on the move, without having to travel to a clinic.

24/7 Care   Doctors are able to diagnose a wide range of nonemergency medical conditions and prescribe medications.

Prescription Services**  If needed, a prescription can be sent to a local pharmacy.

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Make sure you have setup your account on myuhc.com to access virtual visits.

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How virtual visits work

Watch a short video about Global Telecare by Teladoc.

Global Telecare by Teladoc may be available at no cost to you if you are assigned outside of the United States

*Cellular messaging and data rates may apply.  **Certain prescriptions may not be available, and other restrictions may apply.

Products and services may be limited or excluded by applicable law and are subject to availability. UnitedHealth Group cannot guarantee clinical outcomes. Proper functionality of the online and mobile applications and tools is dependent upon appropriate connectivity and features of the device, potentially including international calling, camera, and certain other capabilities.

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Virtual Visits

Virtual Visits lets members choose a virtual visit provider group, and see and speak to a doctor using their mobile device or computer. Members can obtain a diagnosis and a prescription if appropriate, which is sent to their pharmacy (subject to availability). 

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More physicians want to tap into virtual care. Here are 4 ways to do that.

By: Emily Schmidt

COVID-19 dramatically transformed the telehealth landscape, prompting healthcare providers to expand their virtual care capabilities — but integrating physicians into virtual care models poses significant challenges. Matt Brown from CHG Healthcare outlines four strategies to address these challenges and enhance telehealth efficiency across medical specialties.

Trends in telehealth: Integrating physicians into virtual care

Virtual care is here to stay

In 2019, virtual care only accounted for about 0.3% of all medical visits — primarily in emergency and psychiatric settings. Just one year later, COVID-19 triggered a massive surge in telemedicine visits, propelling its use to over 30% of medical visits (with some estimates even reaching 72%) at the pandemic's peak. This dramatic increase pushed healthcare providers to rapidly expand their telehealth capabilities to meet consumer needs.

As the pandemic's urgency subsided, telehealth found a new equilibrium, stabilizing at around 17% of medical consultations . Hospitals have increasingly relied on telemedicine for inpatient services, and some have even started to outsource entire departments to virtual platforms. Outpatient services have also embraced this technology, significantly improving access to specialized care for patients in rural areas.

Looking to the future, the healthcare industry is keen on enhancing the efficiency of telehealth across various medical specialties. Psychiatry is leading the charge, with the potential for nearly 88% of its consultations to be held virtually, according to Advisory Board . Other specialties, such as general surgery and cardiology, are exploring the benefits of telemedicine for pre- and post-operative care and routine follow-ups. Advisory Board also reports that dermatology may rely more on virtual consultations, as over 40% of assessments can be conducted via video or photo evaluation.

4 strategies for integrating physicians into virtual care

The increased demand for telehealth services has placed immense pressure on health systems to quickly expand and adapt their services. Integrating physicians into virtual care models poses significant challenges for health systems. The primary issue is the already heavy workload of physicians, whose packed schedules leave little room for additional telehealth responsibilities. This often leads to provider burnout, which complicates the adoption of virtual care duties.

Technological fragmentation within hospitals also presents a major hurdle. The swift adoption of various telehealth technologies during the pandemic has created a mix of systems and platforms across different departments. This inconsistency can make it difficult for physicians to navigate different interfaces and protocols, reduces efficiency, and increases the likelihood of errors. On top of that, providers are often not fully integrated into the patient's primary healthcare team, which can adversely affect the quality of care.

To address these challenges, health systems can:

1.       Contract with local specialty groups. By engaging local specialists on a part-time basis, health systems can expand virtual care capabilities without the need for full-time employment, thus optimizing resource allocation.

2.       Establish shared resource models. This strategy involves multiple health systems collaborating to share virtual specialists. Such partnerships not only enhance resource utilization but also improve service efficiency across organizations.

3.       Develop in-house telehealth float pools. Creating a pool of on-demand virtual care providers allows for a dynamic adjustment of staffing levels, meeting the fluctuating demands of telehealth services without compromising care quality.

4.       Integrate locum tenens physicians. Incorporating locum tenens physicians into the virtual care framework offers a scalable and flexible staffing solution. These temporary physicians can quickly adapt to the system's needs, ensuring continuous and efficient patient care during peak times or when piloting new services.

(Brown, CHG Healthcare , 11/29/23)

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Since founding the locum tenens industry in 1979, CHG Healthcare has been powerfully serving the healthcare workforce to make a difference in human lives.  Through their dynamic partnerships, CHG Healthcare provides temporary and permanent placement of healthcare providers and helps clients build a more sustainable healthcare workforce. Learn more here .

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Posted on June 27, 2024

Updated on June 27, 2024

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If you’re eligible for an e-visit, send a message to a telehealth provider and get a diagnosis within one hour – 24/7.

Virtual care is just a few questions away

When you or your child isn’t feeling well, you may be able to get 24-hour care with e-visits. If you’re eligible for an e-visit, you’ll fill out a questionnaire about your symptoms and a telemedicine provider will evaluate your condition. They’ll send a diagnosis and treatment plan via LiveWell message within an hour.

E-visits can be a convenient, cost-effective alternative to visiting a clinic or urgent care when you need care for minor illnesses like cold symptoms, urinary infections and back pain.

Your first step? Symptom Checker.

To see if an e-visit is right for you, use Symptom Checker to find care based on your symptoms. We’ll recommend the right type of care, which may include a virtual visit.

Virtual visits like e-visits and Quick Care Video Visits are the quickest, most convenient way to get 24/7 care for minor illness and injury. And if your symptoms require an in-person visit, Symptom Checker will recommend an appointment with your own provider or can help you find local urgent care near you.

When should I use an e-visit?

You can use telehealth visits , like e-visits, to get virtual care 24/7. Once you use Symptom Checker, you may be offered an e-visit – easy, online messages with a virtual care provider . You can use e-visits to address this set list of common, nonurgent symptoms:

• Anxiety or depression
• Bladder or urinary infection
• Birth control refill
• Cold symptoms
• Constipation
• COVID symptoms (with positive test result)
• Eczema flare
• Genital herpes
• Erectile dysfunction
• Head lice (pediatric)
• Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea
• Vaginal discharge or irritation

After your e-visit, you might need to come in for a lab test such as a urine sample to help the provider reach a diagnosis. Or you could need to pick up medication as part of your treatment plan.

Can I use insurance to cover the cost of an e-visit?

Yes, e-visits are billed to your insurance. Your visit is subject to any coinsurance, copay or deductible – just like an in-person visit. You’ll receive a statement detailing your financial responsibility.

We're also able to provide e-visits if you have Medicare or Medicaid as your primary or secondary insurance.

Who can submit an e-visit?

If you're an Aurora Health Care patient, are age 18 or older and physically located in Illinois, Wisconsin or Michigan, you can use Symptom Checker and submit an e-visit for yourself if it’s offered to you. You can also use Symptom Checker and submit an e-visit for kids ages 2-11 if you're their legally authorized representative and an e-visit is offered. Learn about proxy/dependent care .

Are e-visits safe?

Yes, we keep your personal health information safe when you use Symptom Checker and submit an e-visit in LiveWell if it’s offered to you.

How do I start an e-visit?

Once you use Symptom Checker and an e-visit is offered to you, it just takes a few minutes to start your e-visit in LiveWell. We walk you through the steps of starting an e-visit , plus answer common questions you may have.

Where can I learn more about LiveWell?

We can help answer your questions about LiveWell and its features.

How can I ask additional medical questions after an e-visit?

If you have any medical questions following a recent e-visit, call 844-284-0381 to speak with a virtual health nurse.

Use Symptom Checker in LiveWell

Sign in to LiveWell and use Symptom Checker to find care based on select symptoms.

If an e-visit is offered to you, answer a few quick questions about how you’re feeling.

Watch for a message with your diagnosis and next steps within one hour. 

Still need a LiveWell account?

Download the LiveWell app and create an account in one easy step! You’ll find more ways to live well on the go – message your primary care provider, get test results, practice guided meditation and more.

Learn more about LiveWell and its features .

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Other ways to get virtual care

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Democrats are talking about replacing Joe Biden. That wouldn't be so easy.

President Joe Biden's performance in the first debate Thursday has sparked a new round of criticism from Democrats , as well as public and private musing about whether he should remain at the top of the ticket.

In the modern era, a national party has never tried to adversarially replace its nominee, in part, because knows it would most likely fail. The issue came before both parties in 2016, but neither took action.

Party rules make it almost impossible to replace nominees without their consent, let alone smoothly replace them with someone else. And doing so would amount to party insiders’ overturning the results of primaries when Democratic voters overwhelmingly to nominate Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates.

And at the moment, there’s no known, serious effort to push him off the top of the ticket.

Still, the Democratic National Committee's charter does make some provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?

What happens if Biden drops out before the convention?

The only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw, which he has sworn off repeatedly during other bumpy stretches of his campaign.  

He could do so while serving out the rest of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. 

If Biden were to drop out before he is scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats, because there’s no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden’s won 3,900 of them. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention. 

Because Biden's opponents all won effectively no delegates throughout the Democratic nominating process, there'd be a virtual clean slate heading into the convention, and the decision would most likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately, they can vote as they please, so candidates would most likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate.

However, there's a potentially important wrinkle: Democrats plan to formally nominate Biden virtually ahead of the late-August convention to sidestep any potential concerns about ballo t access in Ohio, where a technical quirk has complicated things

Democrats decided to plan a virtual nomination for Biden after Ohio Republicans balked at passing pro forma legislation that would allow Biden to be on the ballot, even though the convention falls after a state deadline. But while Republicans passed a law to shift the deadline, Democrats decided to move forward with a virtual nomination nonetheless.

Could Democrats replace Biden against his will?

There’s no evidence the party would entertain a change without Biden’s consent. But even if it did, there’s no mechanism for it to replace a candidate before the convention, and certainly no way for it to anoint a chosen successor.

If large swaths of the Democratic Party lost faith in Biden, delegates to the national convention could theoretically defect en masse. Of course, they were chosen to be delegates because of their loyalty to Biden and have pledged to support him at the convention.

But, unlike many Republican delegates, Democratic delegates aren’t technically bound to their candidate. DNC rules allow delegates to “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them,” providing some wiggle room.

The party’s charter does include provisions to replace the nominee in the event of a vacancy. The measure is intended to be used in case of death, resignation or incapacitation, not to replace someone who has no desire to step down.

That was the measure that Donna Brazile, then the interim DNC chair, considered invoking after Hillary Clinton collapsed two months before the 2016 election, she wrote in her memoir .

In her memoir, released a year later, Brazile wrote that she was worried “not just about Hillary’s health but about her anemic campaign ... so lacking in the spirit of fight.” 

“Perhaps changing the candidate was a chance to win this thing, to change the playing field in a way that would send Donald Trump scrambling and unable to catch up,” she wrote, adding that aides to other would-be candidates contacted her, including then-Vice President Biden’s chief of staff.

But after less than 24 hours of consideration, Brazile realized the idea was untenable without Clinton’s cooperation and likely to only divide her party further. “I could not make good on my threat to replace her," she wrote.

Current DNC Chair Jaime Harrison is a longtime Biden ally who serves, essentially, at the pleasure of the president. And the national party has certainly given no indication it’s anything but fully behind his re-election.  

What happens if Biden withdraws after the convention?

To fill a vacancy on the national ticket, the chair can call a “special meeting” of the full DNC, which includes about 500 members. On paper, at least, all it takes is a majority vote of those present to pick new presidential and vice presidential nominees. But that process would most likely be anything but smooth and be filled with behind-the-scenes jockeying and public pressure campaigns. 

If a vacancy were to occur close to the November election, however, it could raise constitutional, legal and practical concerns. Among other issues, ballots have to be printed well in advance of the election, and it might not be possible to change them in time.

Would Kamala Harris replace Biden?

If Biden were to relinquish the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris would automatically become president — but not the Democratic Party’s nominee. Nor would she necessarily be the nominee if Biden withdrew from his re-election bid while he remained in the White House.

She might be politically favored, but party rules give the vice president no major mechanical benefit over other candidates. 

Biden’s delegates wouldn’t automatically transfer to Harris, and the convention holds separate votes on nominees for president and vice president. So she would still need to win a majority of delegates at the convention. 

If the top of the ticket were vacated after the convention, she would still need to win a majority of votes at the special meeting of the DNC.

That is all, at least, under current party rules. But a vacancy at the top of the ticket is the kind of dramatic moment that might lead party leaders to revisit them in the name of easing the transition. Harris has some close allies in key places at the DNC, including a co-chair of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. But nothing would be likely to happen without a fight.

Ben Kamisar is a national political reporter for NBC News.

Alex Seitz-Wald is a senior politics reporter for NBC News.

Why UPMC is selling virtual consulting technology to eVisit

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center sold its inpatient virtual consulting technology to health tech vendor eVisit, the companies said Tuesday.

The transaction, the terms of which were not disclosed, represented the end of a four-year journey for the Pittsburgh-based health system. It also makes UPMC part of a rising trend of health systems looking to their commercialization and venture capital arms  to develop new sources of revenue to offset financial challenges. Once proven, the technology can be spun off or sold.

Related: Inside WeightWatchers' shift on Wegovy, Mounjaro, other GLP-1s

UPMC's technology, the idea of which was born during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, allows clinical specialists to consult virtually with bedside clinicians about inpatient care across five specialty services: stroke, neurology, critical care, psychology and toxicology. 

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The health system had unsuccessfully looked before the pandemic for a teleconsulting vendor to help nurses in its intensive care units, one that could align with their workflow.

The health system pivoted and in early 2020 began developing a solution inhouse. The platform came together quickly enough that UPMC provided teleconsulting service to assist New York-Presbyterian Hospital clinicians and patients in New York City during the city’s initial surge in April 2020.

The successful partnership led the UPMC team to continue refining the technology for new use cases. Physicians would hear about it from colleagues in other departments and make suggestions on how to expand the technology, said UPMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Rob Bart. The health system oversaw around 40,000 consults with the technology during a four-year stretch.

Selling the technology should allow other systems to adopt it while saving UPMC the cost of operating the platform, Bart said. 

“When I think about launching a technology and a company, in order to really allow it to mature, you’ve got to let it go and put it in the hands of someone who has good thoughts about how it could grow,” Bart said. “If we just held it ourselves, it would eventually come unsustainable.” 

UPMC made an undisclosed investment in eVisit. The telehealth company also received an investment from Columbia, Maryland-based MedStar Health. In April 2023, eVisit acquired health tech firm Bluestream Health to implement Bluestream’s integrated language services into its telemedicine platform.

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Building savings opportunities into health plans with Consumer Savings Packages

Flexible offerings that focus on consumer savings and employer value. 

UnitedHealthcare is introducing a simplified and flexible offering featuring strategically pre-packaged medical plans and value-added programs that focus on consumer savings and employer value.

These offerings feature incentives for having healthy employees through Performance Funding, in addition to products that offer cash to clients’ employees to help pay for care, and other household expenses such as:

• Care Cash®  – Offers employees up to $500 on a preloaded debit
• UnitedHealthcare Benefit Ally®  – A bundling plan that delivers a cash payout to employees without the need for any forms to be complete
• Garner Health – A health plan addition that encourages care from quality network providers, and reimburses employees for certain out-of-pocket expenses

The Consumer Savings Packages from UnitedHealthcare can demonstrate significant savings opportunities for clients’ employees. All of these packages include the following employee value-added programs in their plan: 24/7 Virtual Visits, UnitedHealthcare Vital Medication Program, the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and UnitedHealthcare Rewards – available to fully insured only Key Accounts and Public Sector customers in AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NV, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY. (Not available in: CT, ID, NH, NM, NY.)

For more information contact your UnitedHealthcare representative.

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