GWINNETT, GA – OB/GYNs are the latest specialists to join the telemedicine craze in America, as Georgia Healthcare announced that their doctors, NPs, and PAs are now available to perform virtual pelvic exams.
The tele-Gyn service is available 24 hours a day for any woman with $50 and a high-speed internet connection. Patients no longer need to even show up to clinic to have their annual exams. Instead, they can purchase a home pelvic kit at Best Buy™, Costco™, or Target™ and perform the exam themselves in the comfort of their own home.
The tele-Gynecologist is reached via Skype™ or FaceTime™ to take the virtual history. Next, the patient can activate the video speculum included in the home pelvic kit and insert it herself. Once the tele-Gynecologist can visualize the cervix, the patient is coached to scrape her own cervix with the brush included and place the scraping into the kit’s preservative container. After that, she inserts the GC/Chlamydia and wet-prep swabs and puts them into the appropriate containers. She then removes the speculum; places the specimens in the package included, and drops the package in the outgoing mail.
Jackie McClellan, a Gwinnett resident, was reached for comment after having her virtual exam. “I will never go to the GYN office again. I used to sit in stirrups for what seemed like an hour in that absurd paper gown in a 64-degree exam room waiting on the doctor to stuff a frozen-steel speculum in me. The tele-Gyn visit is the only way to go. I bought the kit at Best Buy™, put the kids to bed, trimmed up my lady-bits, and dialed in. The doctor was very helpful in talking me through the whole thing, and we were done in 10 minutes. I don’t know why anyone hasn’t thought of this sooner.”
The patient will typically receive results and/or needed prescriptions in 3-5 days. At this point, any patient with concerning cervical dysplasia will still need to come into clinic to have biopsy performed, although a DIY cone-biopsy kit is in the works. There is also a team of researchers reportedly close to producing a scratch-and-sniff monitor to help the tele-Gynecologists diagnose Trichomonas and bacterial vaginosis.
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