Scott Webb (Host): You know those times when you don't feel well overnight, but you know it's not an emergency? Well, Salinas Valley Health PrimeCare Clinics are now offering after-hours telehealth for urgent care needs. Joining me to tell us more today is Dr. Suzanne Rosen. She's a family medicine physician at Salinas Valley Health PrimeCare.

 This is Ask the Experts, the podcast from Salinas Valley Health. I'm Scott Webb. Dr. Rosen, it's so nice to have you here today. We're going to talk about after-hours telehealth for urgent care needs and all the details that we could provide to folks. And I know that Salinas Valley Health PrimeCare Clinics are now offering after-hours telehealth for those urgent care needs. So, tell us about this new service.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: We are really excited about it. It is something brand new. We have always had a doctor on call that you could talk to in the middle of the night, but this is different than that. So, this is an actual telehealth doctor's visit that you can access quite easily via myChart.

Host: Yeah. And myChart, I use myChart as well, and it's nice that it's accessible to folks. It sounds really convenient. But I want to cover one of the age old questions that I think many of us struggle with, Doctor. What's the difference between urgent and emergency care?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: So, an urgent care visit is a visit for something that you'd rather not wait. You don't want to call the office and take the next available appointment, which might be several days or even a week or so away. So, it's a visit where you'd like to get some care right away. Maybe you don't feel well, maybe you're having some symptoms that you're concerned about, and that you think you need some treatment for, you know, soon.

An emergency visit is something that is more along the lines of something being life-threatening. So for example, severe chest pain and you think you're having a heart attack or symptoms of a stroke, profuse bleeding, symptoms where you might need a procedure. So for example, you might need many stitches to be done to sew up a bleeding cut or severe symptoms where maybe you need some immediate tests, like you might need immediate x-rays or a CT scan or immediate blood tests to rule out something dangerous.

Scott Webb: Okay.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: So, those are things we would not be able to provide, obviously, in a telehealth situation, which is a video visit.

Host: Yeah. We'd be talking about science fiction, right? If you could somehow somebody up through their phone, that's a whole other conversation. Maybe I'll live long enough to have that conversation. But what are the benefits of telehealth? I've had those visits with my doctors sitting in my kitchen with my doctor on my phone. But from your perspective, what are the benefits?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Obviously, it's convenience, particularly from the patient's side. You don't have to leave either the comfort of your home or you can even have the visit from your car as long as you're not driving during the visit. For this telehealth service, you can actually do the visit from anywhere in the United States.

So if you were on vacation and you were having some symptoms you were concerned about or felt unwell, you could have this visit from anywhere in the United States. Particular this service is after-hours. So, it allows you to get this kind of a care for the times when our office is usually closed. So, that is very convenient. It also is great for people who have mobility issues, and maybe getting into the doctor's office requires a little more effort. So, it's really great for those times and those circumstances as well.

Host: Wondering, you say after-hours, but when is the service available?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: So, it is available starting at 5:00 PM on Monday through Friday, and it goes until 8:00 AM the next morning. And then, on Saturdays and Sundays, it's 24 hours a day.

Host: That's amazing. That's great. And is the service, the after-hours service, available to anyone in the community?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Well, we developed the service particularly for any of our Salinas Valley Health and also our Taylor Family Health patients. So basically, it's available to any of our patients, but you have to have myChart. So, you do have to have a myChart account, and that's how you access the services.

Host: Right. So, Salinas Valley Health, Taylor Farms Family Health and Wellness patients, so just pretty much everybody in the area as long as they have myChart. So, how do we access telehealth? How does that work?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: It's actually pretty easy, and I've tried it myself. So, you open up myChart. And if you're using the myChart app, you'll see up in the upper left corner, there are three lines and you click on those lines. And it's pretty easy. It says, "Talk To A Medical Provider." And you click on that and it just asks you where are you located. And you say, "I am in the United States." And then you have to say what state you're in. And again, it's okay to not be in California. You just have to be accurate about what state you're in.

Host: Right.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: and then it tells you that, yes, you're going to have an urgent care video visit, and then you just say, "Put me in line to see the next provider," and they will put you in a virtual queue and then your visit will happen.

Host: That's just so cool, so convenient. I love everything about it. If someone was looking to make a regular visit, you know, appointment at PrimeCare, how do they do that? Are there are multiple locations? Give us a sense of how we can just make a regular old appointment versus telehealth and using our phone and myChart and all that.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Right. Well, there is always the old-fashioned way, you can call the location you'd like to make an appointment at. And we have phone operators ready to take your call and schedule an appointment for you. But also, on myChart, it's on that same screen right underneath where it says Talk To A Medical Provider. It says schedule an appointment. And so, you can click on that button and be given, you know, your available options of what things you can schedule through myChart. So, that's also extremely convenient.

Host: Yeah. I love that we're thinking of that as old school now, right?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Exactly.

Host: Actually making a phone call versus a video visit, it's so amazing.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: It's a human actually speaking to another human, so...

Host: Yeah. What a novel concept. I mean, this is so great to learn about this. And, you know, Salinas Valley Health, always on the cutting edge, always trying to meet patients where they are. You know, they could be in California or not, of course. I just want to give you a chance, your final thoughts, takeaways, about the new service, the hours, the convenience, all of that.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Okay. Well, I mean, one of the great things about this service is that the provider that you have your video visit with will have access to your medical record. So, you won't have to go into all of your history or necessarily tell them all the medications you're taking. They can look and see what you're allergic to. They can look at your last visit you had with your doctor, so you're very connected to your chart here at PrimeCare and at Salinas Valley Health. So that's a great benefit.

And then, after the visit, they will have a visit summary that will, A, appear in your myChart so you will be able to view your visit summary from your telehealth visit, but also your provider, your primary care doctor will be able to see the visit and see what was done and what was prescribed. So, it's very well connected and flows seamlessly through your care that you're already receiving here at Salinas Valley Health.

 The other thing I would add is, besides emergency visits, there are some visits that don't lend themselves as well to telehealth. So, you have to use your judgment on that. And you're always welcome to talk with the provider. And if they thought you needed, you know, to be seen in person, they could tell you that. But obviously, if you had something where you were in any kind of severe distress, the telehealth person, again, can't put a stethoscope on your chest through the video, can't touch your abdomen to really evaluate serious abdominal pain. So, those types of things.

Simple rashes sometimes do really well on telehealth, but, you know, if you don't have a great camera or it's in a place that the telehealth provider wouldn't be able to see it easily, that might also not lend itself well to a telehealth visit.

Host: Right. And as you say, you know, things that really are emergencies, stroke, heart attack, profuse bleeding, those are obvious, go to the ED, right? But if you think you're running a fever, if you have a rash in an obvious place, if you got a decent camera, like, you know, some common sense involved, right?

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Exactly. And to add to that, you know, at PrimeCare, we do have urgent care hours, starting at 5:00 PM up until 9:00 PM on Monday through Friday. So if you do need to see a doctor in person during that time, we do have urgent care providers in our office on Abbott Street to see all ages from newborns on up.

And then, we also have in-person hours from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Saturdays and 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM on Sundays. So seven days a week, we still do have in-person with a real person face to face, urgent care. But the telehealth is a service in addition to that, and it's accessible even in the middle of the night. So, there you go.

Host: That's well said. Again, thank you so much for your time. Great to learn about this. You take care.

Dr. Suzanne Rosen: Thank you so much.

Host: After-hours telehealth is available Monday through Friday, 5:00 PM to 8:00 AM and Saturday and Sunday, 24 hours a day.

And to listen to more of our podcasts, please visit salinasvalleyhealth.com/podcasts. And if you found this podcast to be helpful, please be sure to tell a friend, neighbor, or family member. And subscribe, rate and review this podcast, and check out the entire podcast library for additional topics of interest. This is Ask the Experts from Salinas Valley Health. I'm Scott Webb. Stay well, and we'll talk again next time.