| I’ve been on the hunt for a referral to see a new physical therapist. |
| So I decided to try out Doctronic, which markets itself as an AI-enabled primary care doctor. It charges $39 for telehealth visits with human doctors after an initial consultation with its AI, which suggests diagnoses and treatment plans. It’s been on my radar for its push toward using AI alone to refill
prescriptions. This week, it raised $40 million. |
| I expected AI to make things quick, straightforward and simple, knocking out some of my most common gripes with healthcare. And even though I eventually got my referral, the whole process took me two hours. |
| I went through a few iterations of the same conversation. I told the AI I already had a physical therapist in mind who requires a referral, what I needed the referral to say and asked how much it woud cost. It asked me info about my condition and my medical history, then generated a clinical summary to share with my doctor once I was ready to hop on a virtual visit. |
| One of my biggest frustrations with healthcare is not knowing how much I’ll pay upfront. I thought AI, with all its mechanical precision, could easily tackle that. But every time I asked Doctronic how much the visit would cost, it would give me a different estimated range that varied between $39 and $125. |
| When I finally got the AI to guarantee that it would honor the $39 it marketed, I couldn’t access the link to start my virtual visit. It told me it would escalate the issue to Doctronic’s human support, but acknowledged that it’s not able to give me a receipt or prove that it’s done so. Support didn’t contact me. There was no way to hold the AI accountable. When I did connect with my doctor, the visit lasted under a minute with only one or two questions. |
| We’re often pitched on the idea that AI in healthcare has the potential to free up doctors’ time and give them deeper context on each patient through pre-visit summaries. In my case, Doctronic’s summary from my intake might have freed my doctor up a bit too much — and taken the time from me. |
| After he hung up, I received an AI-generated doctor’s note to excuse me from work instead of the referral I needed. |
| I spoke to Doctronic co-founder and CEO Matt Pavelle and told him about my experience. He told me that the company, which started out in urgent care, is still building out its AI to handle different parts of primary care. So far, Doctronic’s been more focused on medication and chronic condition management. But AI works better when it’s focused on narrow, well-defined tasks, such as one specifically for referrals, he said. |
| “If you're looking for chronic condition management, great,” Pavelle said. “But if you're just coming in only for a referral, the pathways to support that, frankly, are incomplete. And that's one of the things that we'll have to add over time and improve upon.” |
| As companies push to use more AI in how they deliver healthcare, it has to deliver an experience that’s better than what came before it. But for now, it fell short. |
| - Ngai |
