The U.S. telehealth industry has grown at a remarkable rate since it was implemented during the pandemic. In 2019 its market value was estimated at $11 billion. By 2020, only one year later, it had grown at a compound annual growth rate of 59% and its value increased to $18 billion. By 2022 it had expanded to $29.6 billion.

     That high growth rate is projected to continue through the next decade and predictions are that by 2030 telethealth will be a $150 billion industry.

     Like any industry with a meteoric rise such as this in revenue, a gold rush mentality can come into play which attracts all manner of carpetbaggers, flim-flam men and grifters. One telehealth example of this greed for quick profit is the indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice in June this year of both the chief executive and the clinical president of the Done telehealth company for their $100 million scheme to defraud taxpayers and bill insurers for writing on-line prescriptions with no legitimate medical purpose.

     One interesting statistic that has recently emerged about the telehealth industry is that in 2021 only 4.5 percent of telehealth visits were to regular MDs, whereas 43.2 percent of visits were to psychiatrists.

     That’s a striking disparity. How could that be?

     Traditional medical doctors only diagnose medical conditions based on specific, objective evidence, the kind that comes from blood tests, EKGs, urine analysis, blood pressure counts, and so forth. Doctors might be able to gather initial information about symptoms a prospective patient is experiencing, but before they make a diagnosis and issue a treatment plan – just as they’re supposed to, per informed consent law – they want to see the patient
sitting right in front of them, look at his tongue coating, tap his knee with a little hammer, and send off various bodily specimens to a laboratory.

     The new on-line telehealth protocol for a psychiatrist is utterly different than that.

     A prospective mental health patient often just answers a short, nine question form asking him if he’s been experiencing sadness or anxiety or some such symptom in the last couple of weeks. If the answer is affirmative, the “diagnosis” is made and he’s written a prescription for an antidepressant or another psychotropic drug. He might also be scheduled for a counseling appointment.

     In other words, the psychiatrist accepts the self-diagnosis of a patient answering these questions – many of which were written by psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, by the way, funded by Big Pharma giant Pfizer – and matches the patient’s reported symptoms to a category from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. From that he puts together a treatment plan that most often includes medication.

     The psychiatrist’s diagnosis is therefore utterly subjective.

     It is based on the patient’s own answers about his symptoms and the opinions of those psychiatrists who sat around a board room table and decided on the three hundred disorders that are listed in the DSM. Not one of those disorders can be verified by any objective laboratory test.

     It is medical practice by opinion, not science.

     It’s an easy way to be prescribed drugs, and it’s an easy way for psychiatrists and Big Pharma to make money.

     Lots of it.

     The gold rush is on.