“Talk to an online health specialist,” says the bold text at the top of the page. Scroll through the list of virtuals health services on Maple’s website and you’ll find a mix of different types of care: medical specialties like endocrinology; loosely defined lifestyle services like “health and wellness coaching”; alternative health services such as functional medicine.
At Maple FAQs for functional medicine, the answers are slippery and do not clarify that practitioners are not doctors and cannot write prescriptions, instead stating that they “prefer to use natural remedies whenever possible” and “can recommend the conventional medicine” but “prefer to use natural remedies”. use alternative medicine first. Providers are “hand-selected” by Maple to work as independent consultants, connecting with patients on its platform and giving the company a share of the payment.
Maple isn’t the only virtual health company offering standard medical care as well as non-essential or fringe services. Examples include the cannabis prescription services offered by Telemed MD and Tia Health, as well as living cell bank service available on Gotodoctor.ca. One of the doctors listed on Gotodoctor.ca specializes in “beauty products”, which is not a recognized medical specialty.
Virtual health companies that mix standard medical care with non-scientific services, such as those promising a “personalized analysis of your whole being,” offer a glimpse of the future health market in Canada: an eclectic, sometimes ill-defined menu , “personalized” services from which consumers choose what (hopefully) meets their health needs. The maple has a long promoted himself as a solution for Canadians “forced to go to crowded walk-in clinics or emergency rooms for routine primary care,” but what it offers is also a stopgap – a menu of episodic services with little continuity .
The growth of the virtual health sector is largely due to the decline of first aid. And because people without advice from a trusted provider are more vulnerable to wellness scams, we should examine virtual care that blurs the lines between evidence and unproven and determine whose interests are being served .
The virtual health industry is dominated by large companies, many of which sell non-essential or unproven treatments in addition to necessary medical care. Gotodoctor.ca is the “preferred virtual care provider» from its pharmaceutical partner Rexall Health, itself owned by the American pharmaceutical giant McKesson. Rexall Health also sells virtual care, including an undefined “holistic nutritionist” service. Another major pharmacy chain, Shoppers Drug Mart (owned by Loblaws), is investing in Maple and also sells virtual care, including prescription cannabis and cosmetic services. Its online store, Wellwise by Shoppers, sells essential items like mobility aids as well as questionable products like a “energy power bracelet” which claims to use “far infrared rays” to vibrate “the body’s cellars in resonance.”
It’s understandable that pharmaceutical companies want to exploit the lucrative wellness market, but snake oil products are harmful and offering them on a platform parallel to essential healthcare legitimizes their use. Even non-essential services that are not typically considered alternative health care (such as cannabis or skin care) may present a problem as newer or less evidence-based industries may attract unscrupulous service providers; consumers, on the other hand, require a high level of knowledge to distinguish fact from fiction.
Profits from non-essential services are certainly higher than those from low-cost primary care such as immunizations, cancer screenings, routine blood tests and treatment of common infections. So, as big pharma becomes increasingly involved in healthcare delivery, we need to monitor the companies’ focus on providing accessible and affordable essential care rather than non-essential services to highest profit.
Being an informed consumer, able to sort through false promises, takes on new importance in a healthcare system structured as a private market rather than an essential public service. Traditionally, patients established trusting relationships with primary care providers who advised them on health and lifestyle decisions, often in collaboration with a network of specialty providers. But the virtual health market was born from a walk-in medicine model that was fragmented and lacked continuity between providers. Episodic walk-in care is associated with higher rates of diagnostic errors, duplicate testing, and delayed treatment. widely understood be worse for health than a long-term relationship with a primary care provider.
Neoliberal ideology has transferred responsibility for health from the state to the citizen
Feelings of stress about illness and frustration with the medical system may increase susceptibility to wellness scams, so it’s worth asking to what extent virtual health companies are responsible for such harm when they profit from them both walk-in care And alternative health services.
If alternative health seems out of place in our evolving system, it’s because the political and cultural wave toward personalized wellness consumerism has been building for decades, perhaps now nearing its peak.
“Health consumer”, a concept born in the 1960s, used by the patients’ rights movement to designate empowerment in a paternalistic and often dehumanizing medical system. The view of health as an individual rather than an institutional endeavor sparked interest in the alternative health movement that rejected medical authority and preached total self-determination. As alternative health boomed in the 1970s, his views spread into the mainstream, popularizing the idea that modern “toxins” create disease and that the body can be purified by “natural” products. “. The healthcare consumer has become to some extent a wellness seeker, attempting to achieve an “ancestral” state of perfect health through correct lifestyle and purchasing.
Policies in recent decades have further expanded the role of the health care consumer. As described by author Colleen Derkatch in Why well-being sells, Neoliberal ideology has transferred responsibility for health from the state to citizens. Health has become a personal duty to maintain, even though key determinants of health such as salary, insurance, access to food and safe housing are often beyond individual control. This has given rise to a “civic and moral imperative” to become a “healthy citizen” who monitors and maintains oneself to avoid burdening the system as a whole. Now, health care consumers not only have the right to pursue individual well-being, they also have a moral responsibility, as health care citizens, to be (and stay) healthy.
As the meaning of the term “health consumer” has transformed over the past six decades, the wellness industry has flourished, selling a dream of empowerment and self-healing. As virtual healthcare becomes a common reality in Canada, the profitability of wellness culture can reach even greater heights.
But inherent to this success is the continued deterioration of public health care and the disenfranchisement of patients, who now constitute a growing clientele for welfare fraudsters. And when fringe health services are sold through virtual clinics, the pharmaceutical companies that own them also profit, a new model of wellness consumption in the 21st century.
We are at a crossroads and entering the era of virtual healthcare. Is it better to create a diverse health market for consumers to navigate, or to establish a public right to essential, evidence-based, and easily accessible health care?
It is time to decide the extent to which we want our system to be based on expectations of good health citizenship rather than on improving health determinants like poverty. We can build a primary care infrastructure that does more than enrich welfare profiteers, it can provide the foundation for strong, broad societal health to support us all.
