Natale Telehealth Consult

Have any of you done a Telehealth consult with Natale? I have mine on Monday and have received NO communication regarding how it works, if I need a special app., or how to actually get the call. They didn't request my records despite the releases being sent and I had to scramble to get stuff sent and barely got it all to them in time. My appointment is Monday at. 3pm and have no idea how it is even going to happen. Ugh.

I can tell you how it worked for me--hopefully they are still doing it the same way. Someone called an hour or two before my appointment just to get some basic information by phone. Since I have an iPhone they said that my consult would be on FaceTime--they would need to make another arrangement if you don't have FaceTime. They can only give you an approximate time for your consult with Natale as he does consults between procedures and they can't predict exactly how long the procedure will take.

At the time of my consult I got a FaceTime call from his NP assistant, Shannon and spoke to her for a few minutes while we waited for Natale to come in. In my case, he was delayed and she called me back a bit later when he was free and then we had the consult.

Hope this helps and others will probably comment if their consults went differently.

I have a Telemed scheduled with Shannon to review a week long Vital Patch. When they called to schedule, I was asked if I wanted Dr. Natale or Shannon for the appt. I've developed a rapport with Shannon, so I went ahead and reserved time with her. It works for me just like Daisy said: a phone call from a staffer about an hour before the scheduled time to review current meds and I'm sure another question or two, then the actual FaceTime call. I believe TCAI uses an iPad for FaceTime, while I connect on my desktop Macintosh.

Because as far as I know my issues arent all that serious, I chose to not consult with Dr. Natale. I have immense respect for him, and would rather he have that time to do whatever is more important for his other patients. I know he's there for me and looking at my data etc., and if he needs to talk or see me in person, I'd be on the next plane to Austin.

For those w/o an Apple device for FaceTime, I am not sure what they use. I suspect it's whatever the patient uses and is comfortable with. My guess is Zoom.

I think Dr. Natale's nurse is relatively new to TCAI, and her name is Maria Bobutanu. She and Dr. Natale's Ambulatory Monitoring Coordinator Velma were on a 3 way phone call with me, and in one call we pretty much did all the prerequisites. I can never say enough good things about TCAI over the years, and I also have such gratitude for what Shannon Dickson has done for me..

I'm not on FB, but that platform uses Messenger. It's quite good and popular. So, so far it's Telehealth, which they ought to have provided at least a clarification over, or Zoom, or Messenger. Used to be Skype, if that still is a thing.