Stiftung Warentest advises against online doctor DrEd

Online medical practice can not replace a real doctor's visit

07/20/2012

The Stiftung Warentest has the online practice „Dred“ tested and has come to a sobering result. According to the consumer advocates, the risk of misdiagnosis is immense. The foundation therefore advises use „urgently“.

Last November, the first online doctor's office opened on the Internet. Patients can receive a first diagnosis for specific illnesses at a charge and, if they wish, they can also receive a medication prescription. Already at the start of „Dred“ The medical online portal, which is operated in England, was exposed to numerous criticisms from the medical profession.

Inaccurate diagnostics?
Stiftung Warentest has tested the Remote Diagnosis Portal, which is operated by German doctors in London. With two fictional illnesses, the testers turned to the portal. The first one was an alleged cystitis and the second was a bacterial infection with chlamydia. In both cases, the fake patients were prescribed an antibiotic, although the reported complaints, according to the authors, only partially resembled the clinical picture and the online doctors also requested for the necessary diagnostics no urine test.

The portal advertises according to its own information, „without appointment, without practice fee, without search for a parking space or waiting room“ provide access to a medical consultation 24 hours a day, regardless of the patient's place of residence. For the remote diagnosis, however, patients have to bear the costs themselves and even the prescription is not yet covered by the statutory health insurance.

Legal opinion: legal gray area
If there is a treatment error, the patient has difficulties, warns the Stiftung Warentest. Because the portal moves with its offer in one „legal gray area“, as a legal opinion of the Foundation determined. In such cases, patients would have to sue the attending physician in the UK. That in turn is very costly and the chances of success before a foreign court are uncertain. "The risk of wrong treatment is immense," emphasize the authors of the foundation. Therefore: "Real patients do not belong in a virtual doctor's office“, summed up the goods tester.

The Center for Quality in Medicine sees in the offer of „Dred“ a „adequate care of patients not met in the beginning“. Although patients can also perform urine tests, which are then sent to a laboratory or even make pictures of their visible diseases and upload online, but these methods are much more cumbersome, „as if the patient goes to the doctor around the corner“. However, patients would turn to the portal, which shun the way out of shame to the doctor due to a venereal disease. Right here, apparently, wants „Dred“ begin. (Sb)