eDoc Begins a New Era with Statewide Medicaid Coverage

Beginning July 1st, eDocAmerica began offering eDoc services to Medicaid recipients and their families in Arkansas. Since there are about 800,000 Arkansas Medicaid recipients, when added to our previously covered clients, this program takes us a long way towards offering the benefit to the majority of Arkansans.

It is especially exciting to begin offering a cost effective health care benefit to this large, underserved population. eDoc services can help with so many of this patient population's needs, including whether a child needs to be taken to see a doctor for acute care needs, to provide information that can help a patient determine if a second opinion needs to be sought for a given care situation, to provide information about medications that patients are on, to provide information to families of nursing home patients that they can use to ask intelligent questions about their family member's care, and many others. For nursing home patients, we encourage family members to log on and ask our professionals questions about their family members anytime, for any reason.

It is a daunting task to effectively communicate the availability of this benefit to this group of patients. We'll be working diligently over the coming weeks and months with the Arkansas Minority Affairs Commission, the Arkansas State Health Department, the Community Health Centers of Arkansas, Area Health Education Centers and Arkansas State government agents to increase awareness of this program and encourage its use.

One of the barriers to this program's success is that many patients either won't have a computer, or won't have access to the internet. We have addressed this with a toll free number (877-581-3362) that Medicaid recipients can call to ask their question. Our call center is staffed by trained nursing personnel who will relay the message to the professional staff and then call the patient back after the answer has been posted.

In addition, we are finalizing an iPhone application that should be ready to go within a short time. We hope to use this new initiative to begin to address some of the health care disparities that exist in the state.

I hope that we will soon see the day that every single resident in our State, insured or not, will be able to log on ask one of our professionals a question that will, in some small way, improve their health!