Telemedicine - Virtual Lactation Consults

 

Healthy Babies, Happy Moms Inc. offers telemedicine appointments for lactation consults as a convenient way for women to get help, encouragement, and support in the comfort of their own home. If you live in Rhode Island, we encourage you to meet with us in person in your home or our East Greenwich office.

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A virtual lactation consultation is a “face-to-face” appointment via your computer, smartphone or tablet with an RN/IBCLC.  Your equipment must have a webcam and speakers for our consult to be effective. We use Zoom, Skype, FaceTime or Google Hangouts to provide this service. It is very beneficial to have a supportive family member available to adjust your equipment so that both mom and baby can be seen and the view adjusted as necessary.  This ensures a thorough assessment and allow us to be most helpful.

Our company is licensed by the Rhode Island Health Department as a Licensed Home Nursing Care Provider and nationally accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Healthcare. All of our Board Certified Lactation Consultants are also Registered Nurses (RN/IBCLCs).  You can read what other mother’s say about our services here.

Just like with our in-person lactation consults, we do our best to meet with all families within 24 hours of receiving a breastfeeding mother’s call. We will schedule an appointment at a time that is convenient for you, and coordinated around when your baby will need to nurse. Consults are generally scheduled one half-hour before a baby is anticipated to eat, so that there is ample time to gain an accurate medical history of both mother and baby as well as a detailed feeding history. Consults usually last about an hour and a half. The consultant stays with the mother throughout the entire feeding, and makes any recommendations necessary to improve the breastfeeding relationship. The consult does not end until the baby is satisfied and all the family’s questions are answered. A detailed care plan with instructions will be available in your AthenaHealth patient portal. In addition, if the consultant feels that either you or your baby needs to be seen in person by a medical professional, she will make that recommendation to you and contact either your pediatrician or OB/CNM.

Insurance Coverage

Effective 2/1/20,  we are able to bill Harvard Pilgrim directly for our telemedicine lactation consults for their subscribers in nationwide, although we still encourage RI mothers to meet with us in person in your home or our East Greenwich office. In order to bill Harvard Pilgrim for telemedicine lactation consults, we require a prescription from your physician. Please have them fax it to 401-884-5541.

We do not currently have any other insurance contracts that we can directly bill for telemedicine lactation consults but we do accept out of pocket payment. Your one time fee of $250 includes one follow up telemedicine consult and unlimited phone follow up. A prescription is not required for private pay. We also recommend you contact your insurance plan directly to see if reimbursement is an option for you. If you have a Flexible Spending Account for Health Care, you may use that to pay for your telemedicine lactation consult. We are happy to provide you with whatever documentation you may need for reimbursement from your insurer or FSA.  

To schedule an appointment, PLEASE call our office at 401-884-8273 or fill out the form below to help us gather all your information for your chart in our AthenaHealth medical record and email you the required forms needed to provide the consult. We require the completed forms and for private pay, payment up front in order to schedule a virtual consult. For Harvard Pilgrim mothers, we need a prescription from your physician.