The Doctors are really into Telemedicine

The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this week about a new telemedicine startup called Doctor on Demand, that was featured on a recent episode of the TV talk show Dr. Phil.  It turns out that Dr. Phil’s son, who is the executive producer of the talk show “The Doctors” is one of the founders of Doctors on Demand and Dr. Phil himself is one of its major investors.  Repeat after me: conflict of interest.

My company jumped on the telemedicine bandwagon a few years ago and has been using a company called MDLive as our telemedicine provider.  Utilization has been lower than we had anticipated but we do see a place for it in the benefits package.  Employees have been using the service for ailments such as eye infections and asthma, as well as for mental health issues like anxiety and depression. 

As the competition in this space has grown, MDLive has signed on Dr. Travis Stork as their celebrity spokesperson.  Dr. Stork may be best known as the bachelor on season 8 of the TV show “The Bachelor,” but is also one of the doctors on the TV show “The Doctors."  Are you following?

So the executive producer of "The Doctors" started a telemedicine company and one of the stars of his show signed on to represent his competition.  “The Doctors” has a segment on the show where they showcase the Doctor on Demand app (again, conflict of interest).  I wonder how the folks at MDLive feel about their spokesperson using the competition on his talk show.