Firm treating strangers by Web shut out by Illinois directive

State regulators move to ice online consultation company MyDoc.com.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Nov. 4, 2002.

The Illinois Dept. of Professional Regulation has ordered MyDoc.com, an Indianapolis-based medical consultation company, to stop prescribing and treating online patients it has never seen.

On Oct. 15, Aurelia Pucinski, the department's director, signed a cease-and-desist order against the Internet startup owned by Roche Diagnostics, a division of F. Hoffman-La Roche, a pharmaceutical firm in Switzerland. The order applies only to Illinois; Indiana has not issued a similar order.

The order alleges that MyDoc.com violated Illinois law by diagnosing and prescribing without the benefit of prior physician-patient relationship or physical exam. It also alleges that the company is violating the Illinois Medical Practice Act, which requires it to be licensed as a physician, surgeon or medical corporation.

MyDoc.com said it had not yet seen the cease-and-desist order and declined to say whether it would challenge it. A customer service representative said she thought the firm was not now accepting Illinois patients.

The AMA, which has a policy against diagnosing and prescribing to patients doctors have never seen, supported Illinois' action. "The AMA applauds the efforts of state authorities to aggressively police Web prescribing sites that bypass medical safeguards with disclaimers that suggest a physical examination or review of reliable medical history are irrelevant to the safety of the patient," said AMA President-elect Donald J. Palmisano, MD. [...]