Frequently Asked Questions about SkyMD^® and Online Dermatology

Short answer? Yes! They are the same people, in fact. All SkyMD doctors hold a state medical license where they practice medicine, and are board certified with at least one of the specialty boards of the American Academy of Medical Specialties (the AAMS). They see patients in person, and many of them own and operate clinics in their local cities. Practicing medicine through the internet is the same as practicing medicine face-to-face, per the requirements of all State Boards of Medicine. Most medical insurance companies now cover telehealth visits and typically reimburse doctors the same whether evaluating a patient online or in-person. Telemedicine also allows our doctors to reach patients in more remote areas of their US State or see people who are too busy to come into their clinic. Many of our patients comment that the service they receive on SkyMD is better than an in-person medical visit because they don’t feel rushed and they receive better attention to questions and details about their health concerns.

Telemedicine usually means one of two methods for interacting with your doctor: (1) for skin (online dermatologists) health issues, by asynchronously uploading photos of your skin condition, or (2) through a scheduled live (synchronous) video conference, by appointment.
For asynchronous visits, SkyMD doctors are able to evaluate your skin condition by reviewing your photos and medical history, asking you questions, answering your questions, and otherwise reaching a diagnosis and recommending a treatment plan to start the process of addressing your skin condition. Sometimes, a video call may be added to the visit. For example, if your doctor wants to discuss side effects of a particular medication, they may prefer to have that discussion in real-time, face-to-face with you.
For synchronous video visits, we schedule those by appointment with our patients, and use Zoom as our preferred video conferencing platform. Patients are able to see any doctor’s appointment schedule and select a date and time most convenient for them. A video conference web link is generated for the call and the patient and doctor meet in Zoom to discuss the patient’s medical concerns.

You can start using SkyMD immediately! The first step is to sign up and create a new account, which is completely free. Once you are in the virtual waiting room, you can start any type of visit, browse doctors, and more. When you are ready, you can start a new visit, like a regular doctor’s appointment! We will explain any costs to you beforehand, allowing you to add your health insurance if you’d like, and otherwise give you a price estimate before you see a doctor. Last, we will confirm your identity and home state of residence and match you to one of our doctors that holds a medical license in your home state. Tip: Be sure to fill out your medical history profile to better prepare your SkyMD doctor for your appointment.

SkyMD’s medical services are available anywhere in the United States, meaning all 50 US states, plus the District of Columbia! The top menu of our website provides links to a variety of ways to search for doctors by specialty, medical condition, insurance, and geographic location. As we continue to add more medical specialties to our services menu, some services are not yet in all 50 US States, but we are working hard to employ enough doctors to cover all 50 States for all specialties asap.

SkyMD’s telehealth services are available all the time! You can submit a visit, or book an appointment, on SkyMD 365 days of the year, even on holidays, and our team will either respond immediately if during normal business hours, or within 12 hours of submission. For booked appointments, our doctors would meet with you by video at your scheduled appointment’s date and time. Use SkyMD anytime you have a non-emergency medical issue. SkyMD is not an Emergency response medical service or group. We are a national out-patient medical group helping patients with non-emergent medical needs. If you feel you are experiencing a medical emergency, you should always immediately call 9-1-1 or go to your local Urgent Care Clinic or Emergency Department near your home.

SkyMD welcomes all patients of all ages residing in the United States! We accept a long list of health insurance, or a patient can pay by credit card or mobile wallet. Our telehealth services are especially convenient for patients with a busy schedule or those who have difficulty scheduling an appointment with any local doctors’ offices. We offer flexible times to speak with one of our doctors, including weekends. And, we also work with many patients who have disabilities that make it difficult for them to see a doctor in person.

SkyMD’s doctors can see patients of all ages. For minors, a parent or guardian must first register on the SkyMD platform, complete the informed consent step, and then add the minor to their account as a patient. We do require a parent or guardian’s consent to any treatments prior to completing the evaluation and prescribing any necessary medications.

We are very customer service focused at SkyMD, and our staff greets every new patient right away, typically within five minutes. Patients are free to ask any questions, chat with our staff, discuss payment options, and upload supplemental medical information. For non-video interactions, our doctors review cases throughout the day and will often have questions for patients to answer before they can complete their diagnosis and order any medications. For scheduled video appointments, any questions will be asked and answered during the visit.

As SkyMD has grown, expanding into multiple medical specialties, we now support both video and non-video telehealth visits.

In 2018, SkyMD started as a dermatology-only telehealth platform, offering non-video visits to patients that would upload high-resolution photos of their skin conditions, and that is still a big part of SkyMD. Our online dermatologists see patients in all 50 States every day this way, without video conferencing being required. However, SkyMD is one of the few medical groups that treats acne by prescribing Accutane, and before our online dermatologist doctors will prescribe that medication, we require a face-to-face video call with our patients to talk about the treatment plan and potential risks and benefits of that medication.

For all other medical specialties, such as primary care, pediatric, and behavioral health visits, we want to see our patients in a video conferencing format. Live video is usually better for both the patient and the doctor, and more information can be shared during a live video call than a phone call or answering back and forth. Separately, in some cases, certain health insurances require a video conferencing format for all telehealth visits, regardless of the specialty, such as Medicare, and some US States may require a video conferencing modality for telehealth calls. These rules are always built to protect both the patient and the doctor, ensuring a proper relationship is established between the two parties, verifying the patient’s identity, especially if medications may be prescribed.

Bottom line: We won’t give up on you, and if you need to be seen in-person by someone outside our group, we will refer you to another local in your local area. SkyMD doctors are board certified and are able to evaluate many medical conditions, however some diseases require an in-person consultation. Telemedicine services are still a great way to start the medical evaluation process, though. At SkyMD, we strive to provide the continuity of care sometimes needed for the patient and will refer you to a local clinic, if we feel that is best for you. In particular, if one of our doctors observes something during your visit that needs to be treated in-person, such as a suspicious mole needing a biopsy, or a wart needing to be frozen off, we will help you find a local clinic or doctor that can better assist you. Our doctors are surrounded by a fantastic support staff of medical assistants that can coordinate with one of our clinic partners to get you scheduled with another doctor that can continue your care.

You can search for doctors on SkyMD several different ways. The easiest approach is to search on our website by your city and/or state to see all the doctors on SkyMD that are licensed in your local area. Or, after you sign-up, you will have access to seeing different doctors by medical specialty depending on your home state of residence and appointment availability.

SkyMD is accessible through any web browser, using mobile or desktop devices. Signing up for the first time is super easy, too. On our website, you’ll find sign-up buttons in the upper right corner and throughout the body of different webpages. You will receive a confirmation email upon completion of registration. If you encounter any issues or have questions, please contact us at 858-900-2766.

Yes, SkyMD accepts most major PPO and commercial health insurance across the United States, as well as Medicare, Tricare, Medicaid, and several HMO networks in select US States. It is important to note that although your insurance might be “eligible” because SkyMD can accept it, your personal insurance plan may not cover telemedicine services, or consider SkyMD an in-network provider. If you don’t have a qualifying insurance for telehealth/telemedicine, you will be considered a cash pay patient. For your convenience, you can access a list of all the health insurance on the SkyMD website. A few of the most popular health insurances are: Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, United Healthcare, Molina and Health Net.

If you do not have health insurance, SkyMD works with cash paying patients, too. We provide our patients with price estimates to the extent you give us enough information about your health insurance plan. Our medical services are the same, regardless of payment method. This includes a diagnosis, a detailed treatment plan, any necessary prescriptions. SkyMD accepts all major credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, most ‘wallet’ methods, and supports HSA and FSA cards.

For all our patients, we complete a check-in prior to being seen by one of our doctors. During check-in, our staff helps patients understand what charges will apply for any visit with our medical group, and provides them with an estimate of those charges. We do not charge our patients until after they see one of our doctors, but we are required to collect any co-payments up-front, no different than seeing a doctor in-person. After your visit is completed, we will bill your insurance network. Depending on your insurance plan’s deductible, out-of-pocket maximum, and co-insurance, you will receive a bill for any remaining cost of the visit. The amount of the bill depends on how much your insurance is willing to cover, and patient’s should always know how their insurance plan works before seeing any doctor.

Unlike other telehealth platforms, SkyMD believes in helping patients from start to finish. This includes collecting a detailed medical intake, providing a thorough examination, rendering one or more diagnoses, providing a detailed explanation of your diagnoses and building a comprehensive treatment plan tailored to each patient. We also understand that prescription medications can be costly. Our medical assistants are trained to help patients navigate their insurance network’s formulary, and our doctors try to prescribe medications that are in-network or at least affordable for their budget. After your visit, we encourage our patients to stay in contact with their SkyMD doctor, and our platform allows patients to contact their physician for up to 7 days after their evaluation is complete.

First, and most importantly, SkyMD is strictly for non-emergency medical issues. You should not use SkyMD if you are experiencing a life-threatening emergency. In the event of a medical emergency, you should dial 911 immediately.

Otherwise, telehealth can generally be a great way for a patient to connect with a doctor, establish a relationship, and start a plan around treatment. Our doctors use telehealth to cover as many medical conditions as possible, while understanding that patients often have to be seen in-person at a later date.

SkyMD is intended to evaluate and treat a large variety of non-life threatening medical conditions. Dermatology (skin-related) medical issues are very popular through telehealth, and often include the uploading of one or more high-resolution images of the skin issues. For primary care, general medicine, pediatrics and behavioral health needs, all of our doctors have by-appointment video schedules accessible to any patients that need them.

SkyMD started back in 2018 as a dermatology group, and so we can treat a very wide range of skin conditions, especially skin disease that typically leads to a treatment using topical medications that can be prescribed and picked up at a patient’s local pharmacy.

As we have grown, we’ve diversified, adding more medical specialties and doctors to the SkyMD family. Our family practice, internal medicine, and online pediatrician doctor are available to discuss any medical condition in their scope of practice, along with any new specialties we add as our medical group continues to grow. And all of our doctors can refer any patient to any other specialist, when needed.

Some of the most common medical conditions we encounter using telehealth are:
Acne and acne scarring, cold sores, rashes, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, dandruff, hair loss, toenail fungus, athlete’s foot, skin lesions, skin discoloration, eyelash thinning, excessive sweating, hyperhidrosis, warts, common cold and flu symptoms, anxiety, depression, fever, chills, coughs, sinus problems, weight loss, diabetes, UTIs, URIs, STIs / STDs, lyme disease, and more.

Yes. If our SkyMD doctor believes medication is warranted, he or she will write a prescription for non-narcotic medications (i.e. no controlled substances), which can be sent directly to the pharmacy of your choice. After your visit is completed, we send the prescription order to the pharmacy, and the pharmacy fills the order. We work with patients to prescribe medications in-network to their health insurance’s formulary, whenever possible.

Yes, SkyMD’s team is thoroughly trained to submit prior authorizations for medications. If a prior authorization is needed, your pharmacy will usually notify our team and our support staff will submit the request for a prior authorization as soon as possible. It can take as long as 1-2 weeks to hear back from a patient’s health insurance, and once we have either their approval or denial, our staff will contact you.

SkyMD always takes cost and affordability into consideration. Our medical assistants are very knowledgeable about health insurance, medication formularies, and prescription costs. Generally, our rule of thumb is to prescribe medications covered through your insurance, with a low co-pay. If a medication is too expensive, or the price is not what you expected from the pharmacy, we instruct our patient’s to not pick up the prescription, and to contact our support staff to discuss different options for prescriptions that fit your budget.

Yes, most SkyMD doctors will prescribe Accutane and biologics, including Otezla, Humira, Enbrel, Cosentyx, Taltz, and more, assuming they choose that course of treatment for a patient. Any use of these drugs often require close monitoring while patients are taking them and separately require that bloodwork is frequently ordered from a local laboratory. Our online dermatologist doctors will often try different medications if a patient is not responding well to some other medication, and sometimes the patient’s insurance will suggest that one medication be tried before other medications can be approved for coverage.

Yes, SkyMD is a multi-platform application. You can use SkyMD website on any mobile device, tablets, as well as computers.

At SkyMD, we take your privacy very seriously! Laws are also in place to protect your privacy. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is designed to be a standard level of protection. Some states have even stricter laws in place to protect your personal health information. SkyMD may share your information with your primary care provider in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. We also go to extra lengths to protect your information. You are issued an encrypted login and password when you register. Do not ever share this information with any other person. We also encrypt all data transmissions on our platform. For credit card info, we do not store card numbers, and encrypt them during the one time we do use them to charge you for our services.

If you have a question and don’t see it listed and answered in our FAQs, please call us at 858-900-2766, or email us at support@skymd.com.