SAFETY & STEWARDSHIP
Our Mission
Duration Health is a mission-driven organization with a deep belief in patient autonomy.
We are physicians who believe that a doctor’s job is to be more than just a gatekeeper, but also an educator, collaborator, and partner in your well-being.
Our mission is to save lives by providing access to emergency medications and supplies. We also exist to empower our patients with the knowledge and tools to handle medical emergencies with confidence.
In pursuit of this philosophy, we pioneered the practice of prophylactic prescribing for emergency scenarios with our launch in 2019.
A Changing World
As Board-Certified Emergency Physicians, we see firsthand the increasing difficulty many Americans have accessing routine medical care. With a lack of available primary care, many Americans turn to urgent care centers or even the emergency department, where care is hurried, distracted, and often inadequate.
Patients in rural areas face even greater barriers to care, where life-saving emergency medical services may be remote.
And, patients traveling away from home, whether domestically or internationally, face unique circumstances in which they may be unable to access care.
The Duration Health Med Kit
To provide patients with an emergency option when routine medical care is unavailable, we created the Duration Health Med Kit.
Our physicians review each patient's needs, and we prescribe and ship a custom Med Kit based on each patient’s specific needs.
Our Med Kit formulary contains the medications most prescribed at urgent cares for acute, non-emergent conditions, along with a select set of potentially life-saving medications for emergent scenarios where help is limited.
Prophylactic Prescribing
We recognize that any prescription, whether written by your local primary care physician or an online provider, has the potential to be misused.
In addition, there are legitimate concerns within the medical community and beyond about antibiotic overprescribing and overuse.
The Duration Health evaluation process and the patient-physician consultation is designed to help minimize those risks by, among other things, informing every patient about the benefits and potential dangers of prophylactic prescriptions.
Who can buy a Med Kit?
To focus our efforts toward patients most likely to be without access to routine medical care, our patient population is limited.
- You currently live in a state where our medical practice operates
- You must anticipate living, working or traveling in the next 12 months, for at least 3 days:
- outside the United States; or
- within the United States, but in a wilderness area at least 2 hours travel time to an emergency department; or
- within the United States, but in a medically underserved geographic area, as defined by HRSA; or
- within the United States, but in an area at high risk of natural disaster, as defined by the US Natural Hazards Index
- You must be in overall good health
These guidelines do not replace the independent judgment of our physicians. Only our physicians can determine whether you are eligible to receive prescriptions.
Antibiotic Stewardship
We take our responsibility for stewardship of antibiotics and other medications extremely seriously.
It’s estimated that 1 in 3 antibiotic prescriptions are written inappropriately, most often for common colds, viral sore throats, and other upper respiratory infections that do not respond to antibiotics [1]. These 47 million inappropriate prescriptions per year result not only in antibiotic resistance, but in allergic reactions, diarrhea, and other unnecessary complications. In this context, prophylactic prescribing of antibiotics is a serious issue.
None of the prescriptions a Duration Health patient might be prescribed should be used to treat common colds, viral sore throats, or other upper respiratory infections that do not respond to antibiotics — and our patients are educated about this, as well as the circumstances in which a particular antibiotic should and should not be taken — before they ever receive a prescription.
Further, unlike the antibiotic prescriptions described above, we anticipate that most of the antibiotic prescriptions written by Duration Health providers will actually never be used. Although our Med Kit in some instances includes antibiotics, each and every medication in the Med Kit is intended for use in true emergencies only. Indeed, it is intended for use in a last resort scenario — where a patient has no access to a doctor, hospital, or other medical care, and cannot obtain such access in the near future due to their remote location (or other similar factors). All Duration Health patients are required to accept these conditions and restrictions.
With these important steps in place, the public health benefit Duration Health provides via emergency access to potentially life-saving medications can outweigh the potential risks of antibiotic overuse or misuse.
Online Consultation
All online consultations are led by a U.S. licensed, Board-Certified physician. Your consultations are meant to both evaluate you and educate you on how to use your Med Kit.
The physician evaluation and consultation you will receive as a prerequisite to being prescribed any medication is a crucial step in ensuring patients understand the risks and benefits of their medical treatment. As part of your evaluation by our physicians, we’ll ask you questions to determine what type of prophylactic prescriptions might be appropriate for your circumstances. Our physician will ensure you understand the risks and benefits of the medications and supplies you’ll receive. During this process, the physician will also discuss with you the importance of using these products only if truly necessary, and will require you to agree that you'll use these products for their intended purpose only.
Of course, you should keep in mind that some patients may not receive any prescriptions following their consultation. This happens if our physician determines it would be inappropriate for a particular patient, based on factors like medical history, current health conditions, and other concerns.
After you have engaged in careful discussion of relevant risks and benefits with one of our physicians, you will be able to receive any medications prescribed to you. And a Duration Health physician will always be available to answer any questions and discuss concerns.
Trusted Pharmacy Partners
Our partner pharmacies are fully licensed, U.S. based mail-order pharmacies that specialize in filling prescriptions by mail for online telehealth companies such as ours. With your permission, we send prescriptions electronically to one of our pharmacy partners, and they dispense, package and ship your medications. Our partner pharmacies are NABP-accredited by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.
We also provide you with extensive information about each medication, plus remote access to a physician, so you can follow up with questions at your convenience. We make sure you have the tools and knowledge to responsibly use the items in your Med Kit in an emergency.
Educating the Public
To educate the public and our patients about appropriate medication use, including antibiotics, we wrote and published the Duration Health Field Guide, available for free to the public on our website and included in print in all of our Med Kits.
The Field Guide includes information about appropriate antibiotic use, along with triage protocols written by our physician team regarding the use of antibiotics and other medications.
The Field Guide emphasizes antibiotic stewardship and seeking real-time advice from a physician whenever possible.
Duration Health patients also receive counseling from our physicians during the video visit or offline doctor review that accompanies each kit.
Contact Us
For more information, please contact us at [email protected]. On behalf of the Duration Health Team, thank you for reading, and stay safe.
