At one point during the pandemic, I lived in a different state than two doctors who I saw virtually every few months (due to moving during the pandemic to a nearby city that happened to be just across the border). The state I lived in put fairly short deadlines on how long they'd allow out of state telemedicine, and whenever it came within a few weeks, they reiterated to the doctors I saw that they would _not_ extend the deadline...only to extend it at the last minute anyhow. By the time it finally didn't actually get extended, I had moved back, so I didn't need to actually make this decision, but the sense I got is that the ones who would have gotten in trouble would be the doctors, not the patients, and considering that I knew and liked these doctors (and obviously had a vested interest in them continuing to practice), I wouldn't have risked it for their sakes, despite the inconvenience.
I regularly see an out-of-state provider via telemedicine and no, nothing stops me from lying and saying that I'm in the same state as the provider. (He knows and doesn't care.)
The telemedicine visits themselves are conducted through MyChart. It's definitely not checking my IP or it would've caught me a long time ago, especially since I have to check the "I am currently in <x state>" checkbox every single time I see him :P
You can just trust IP geo databases to be accurate down to the country* - and that's only most of them time and not even considering VPNs exist.
Sure, if something looks fishy you could then go through the appropriate legal channels to get a more exact location from the ISP, but false positives are going to happen so often, eventually everyone involved might get a bit cranky.
* Only the likes of Google have the scale and requisite information to keep more accurate and up-to-date databases, and even those are fallible.
saghm|2 years ago
spondylosaurus|2 years ago
The telemedicine visits themselves are conducted through MyChart. It's definitely not checking my IP or it would've caught me a long time ago, especially since I have to check the "I am currently in <x state>" checkbox every single time I see him :P
userinanother|2 years ago
pdonis|2 years ago
chmod775|2 years ago
Sure, if something looks fishy you could then go through the appropriate legal channels to get a more exact location from the ISP, but false positives are going to happen so often, eventually everyone involved might get a bit cranky.
* Only the likes of Google have the scale and requisite information to keep more accurate and up-to-date databases, and even those are fallible.