• Vitality GP delivers consultations via video calls
• Payment towards private prescriptions and diagnostic tests
• GPs to manage both health conditions and lifestyle behaviours
Delivered via an app available for certain Android and Apple devices, Vitality GP offers 24-hour access to a medical professional via telephone, as well as video appointments within 48 hours. Importantly, the Vitality GP is positioned at the centre of Vitality’s private healthcare offering, allowing them to refer patients for minor diagnostic tests, prescribe medication, and make immediate referrals into consultant care without the need for an NHS GP referral.
By integrating into Vitality’s partner network, the Vitality GP will co-ordinate treatment that includes, on the clinical side, home-based services such as blood samples taken by medical professionals, and delivery of prescriptions through the LloydsPharmacy network. On the wellness side, the ability to confidentially and securely access a member’s Vitality wellness data will also allow the Vitality GP to consult with patients broadly around their lifestyle choices, and the effect that these choices could have on their long-term health.
The availability of this data means the Vitality GP not only performs the traditional role of the GP in managing illness, but also serves as a lifestyle coach for members; consulting appropriately on interventions such as nutrition, exercise and stress that in turn can prevent the early onset of disease caused by poor lifestyle choices. To deliver this, each Vitality GP has undergone extensive training to enable them to interpret Vitality wellness data.
Members can also make choices including the gender of their Vitality GP and take advantage of special devices such as smart-phone camera lenses to enable more accurate assessments of complaints e.g. skin conditions.
Neville Koopowitz, CEO of VitalityHealth, said: “Vitality GP heralds a major change in the way people seek and consume healthcare. Our mission as an organisation is to deliver holistic healthcare and wellness to our members, and Vitality GP takes us several steps further along this journey. Private healthcare has often fallen down by its reliance of needing an NHS referral; Vitality GP represents the launch a new category of insurance where our network of private GPs can co-ordinate members’ care when and where they want or need it.
“Importantly, this is not an evolution purely to help people recover from illness. We want to improve the health of our members and encourage them to speak to their Vitality GP about their general health whenever they choose to, and before they actually fall ill. We know people trust their GP more than any other source when it comes to health advice*, and so to be able to bring them even closer to that source is reflective of the way the industry as a whole is heading. It’s an exciting time to be working in healthcare.”
Dr Doniert Macfarlane, telemedicine expert, said: “It’s my view that the private sector – health insurers and private healthcare – provides choice and removes a population from the NHS, thereby reducing waiting lists and taking pressure off services. It’s about time we recognised the positive impact this has.
“If applied in the correct way, health insurance, private healthcare and telemedicine can assist in the general wellbeing of the members they cover, especially when they also encourage healthy lifestyle changes. The NHS itself recognises the huge potential for telemedicine services in the future and is already using it in certain medical specialties, such as dermatology, to reduce costs and provide patients with better access to expert advice.”
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