9 Things I Like About Quality Pharmacies But 3 Is My Favorite
Not much of a day passes by when our e-mail inboxes don't fill with advertisements for medications. Many of these emails promise to deliver drugs of all classes by overnight courier with no prescription. While you can find legitimate online pharmacies, as well as the practice of telemedicine or cyber-medicine is gaining acceptance, this change within the way medicine is being practiced is rocking the foundations of the medical establishment. Having the ability to consult a doctor online, and obtain prescribed drugs delivered to your front door by UPS has broad social and legal implications. The net facilitates making drugs available to folks who may not be able to afford to pay US prices, are embarrassed to find out a doctor face-to-face, or are susceptible to pain, dealing with which puts most doctors in direct conflict with the 'war on drugs' but in contrast there will be the question whether these pharmacies make drugs available to recreational drug users without the oversight of a licensed medical practitioner.
Medical treatment in the US has reached a point where it's expensive and impersonal which has caused the consumer to become generally unsatisfied with the medical establishment as a whole. Examples include the huge differences between the cost of drugs within the US and Canada, long wait times in US pharmacies, and poor service in general. Perhaps realizing this, US customs appears to tolerate the millions of Americans that visit Canada on a yearly basis to buy their medications, as for the most part, these 'drug buyers' are elderly American's that can't afford the high cost of filling their prescriptions within the US.
Rather than to travel to Canada or Mexico millions of Americans are now turning to the web for both their medical needs. Telemedicine (or cyber medicine) provides consumers with the ability to both consult with a doctor online and order drugs over the web at discounted prices. This has resulted in consumers turning to online pharmacies for their medical needs, and in particular pharmacies with a relationships with a doctor, which enable the consumer to completely bypass the traditional brick and mortar pharmacies, with the added advantage of having their physician behave as an intermediary between the consumer as well as the pharmacy. In accordance with Johnson (2005) this really is as a result of consumers becoming very dissatisfied in regards to going through both brick and mortar pharmacies and health professionals. As Johnson, notes, "Consumers tend to be more very likely to know the name of their hairdresser than their pharmacist." When Johnson (2005) rated the different professions in the medical care system, he found that pharmacists had the minimum interaction with their patients than did some other group. Today, as a result of this "consumers are buying 25.5 percent of their prescriptions online, opposed to 13.5 percent of that are picked up at a brick and mortar pharmacy" (Johnson 2005).
What has brought so much focus on online pharmacies is the fact that it is possible to get just about any drug without a prescription online. Many of these prescriptions are for legitimate purposes purchased through an online pharmacy because the buyer is too embarrassed to visit the physician or for other reasons including the unavailability of FDA approved drugs to the consumer. These drugs may include steroids that because of the misuse and being classed as a classed a category three drugs, are seldom prescribed by physicians. These drugs have a useful purpose to those affected by any wasting disease for example AIDS, they also play a role in ant-aging (FDA, 2004).
Today a visit to the physician can be brief, much of the triage it is produced by a nurse or a nurse practitioner with the physician only dropping in for several minutes, if at all. In many cases the patient is seen by a nurse practitioner. One of the arguments against telemedicine or possibly a better term is cyber-medicine, is that the physician won't have a physical relationship with the patients and so is in no position to make a diagnosis, and so can not legally prescribe drugs.
Ironically when one compares the work up that one has to go through to consult through an online physicians and compares this to a face-to-face visit with a local doctor, one finds that the online physician, in lots of cases, has a better knowledge of the patient's health issue than does the doctor who meets face to face with the affected person. In many cases before an on-line the physician prescribes any sort of medication they insist on a full blood workup they might also require that one has additional tests performed, for example.
