Services / Telemedicine Service
Telemedicine Service
A consultation with a hospital doctor held over a video call, for patients whose difficulty is getting to Banjara Hills.
A video consultation is a consultation with a hospital doctor held over a video call instead of in a clinic room. It is meant for people who cannot easily travel here: a parent living in another district, someone who cannot lose a working day for a short review, a patient recently discharged who has one question about the recovery.
The hospital describes these as short consultations with any of its doctors. Reports can be sent ahead, so that the doctor has read them by the time you speak.
Do not use it for anything urgent
If the problem is happening now, do not arrange a call and do not wait for one. Chest pain, breathlessness, a suspected stroke, a bad injury, bleeding that will not stop, a fit or a collapse all need the emergency department, which is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Call 040 4699 9999, or the ambulance on 1800 2024, and come in.
The same goes for a wound or a surgical site that is getting redder, more painful, more swollen or is leaking after you were discharged. That needs looking at, not describing.
What a video consultation is used for
- Follow-up advice after a hospital visit or a procedure
- A review of the medicines you have been prescribed
- Going through test results and scan reports
- A further opinion where travelling to the clinic is impractical
What it cannot do
A doctor on a call cannot examine you. Nothing can be felt, pressed or listened to, and no blood test or scan can be done down a camera. If the doctor needs any of that to be sure, you will be asked to come in, and for some problems that is the honest outcome of the call.
A video consultation does not always end in a prescription. What a doctor will prescribe without having examined you is limited, and it depends on the problem and on what you are already taking.
Getting ready for the call
Registering with the hospital is free and can be done on the hospital website or on the hospital's app, which is called VHealth. Registration gives you a hospital number and the credentials your records are kept under; reports can then be read either on the web portal or in the app.
Have your reports to hand, including any done at another hospital, and your medicines in their boxes rather than written out from memory. Reports sent before the call are better than reports held up to the camera during it, so that the time goes on your problem rather than on reading.
If it turns out you need to be seen
Clinic appointments are booked on the appointments page, by the request form there, by phone on 040 4699 9999 or on WhatsApp. That route books an appointment in the hospital; it does not offer a video slot.
Seeing a relative who is admitted here
This is a separate facility and not a consultation. The hospital has video stations in some wards and units so that a family member away from Hyderabad can see a patient. It works only while the video station in that ward is switched on and logged in. If the view does not open, ask the in-charge of the ward your relative is in.