But he couldn't make himself do it.
"I didn't want to spend the next 30 years of my life doing that," he says in between sips of coffee at a café in his Brooklyn neighborhood.
Parkinson decided to open his practice in cyberspace, where he recruits, diagnoses and even treats his patients online. He has no office. Instead, he makes himself available to his patients via email or text message.
Dr. Jay Parkinson calls himself a new kind of physician: one who communicates with his patients online. Photo by Noah Kalina
His system works like this: patients pay $500 a year to be part of his network. For that, they get a complete initial physical examination at their home, office or wherever they may choose, plus two additional visits. Afterwards Parkinson is available to them by email or text messaging, anytime during normal business hours.
Patients can web chat with Parkinson on his Apple Powerbook or even upload a photo of a cut finger to his iPhone so he can determine whether they need stitches or just a band-aid. In addition, his website has a list of symptoms and questions to go with them, so patients can streamline the diagnosis process by filling in answers online.
Most of the actual diagnosing and treatment happens in patients' homes.
He limits his practice to his own zip code, with few exceptions, and sees only patients between the ages of 18 and 40.
It's a unique practice, but Parkinson doesn't want to be known as a Web M.D: "I'm not so much an online doctor. I am a doctor who utilizes good communication for my patients."
The 31-year-old is a bit of an Internet pioneer. While still a student, he designed medical training websites. And more than 10 years before YouTube made Web video ubiquitous, he was uploading cardiac ultrasound images to the Internet.
His interests are not confined to technology and medicine - he's also an amateur photographer with a dedicated following on Flickr. During his medical residency in Baltimore, he created a series of portraits of aspiring models that seem to expose both their subjects' dreams and the improbable distance they will have to travel to achieve them. There's a tattooed, red-haired woman sitting on a floral couch, naked except for a pet hamster she holds in front of her.
Parkinson practiced photography during medical school
Another woman sits on the corner of a bed in her attic bedroom, arching walls in the background missing patches of green paint.
Another of Parkinson's models.
His experience as a photographer may make it easier for Parkinson to treat people in their own homes. It also reflects an artistic sensibility that has led him, in part, to treat other artists--like Pilita Garcia.
Brooklyn-based Garcia developed chronic asthma from smoking cigarettes and constant exposure to paint fumes. She could hardly breathe when she text messaged Parkinson. She had been having trouble getting an appointment with a traditional doctor.
"I sent him an email and within two minutes he answered me and the next day he was here," she said from her loft apartment near the Manhattan Bridge.
Parkinson not only prescribed medication that helped Garcia get better almost immediately--he also helped her find it at 90-percent below cost. It was a huge savings for Garcia, who like most of Parkinson's patients is uninsured.
Parkinson says he's developed a network of service providers, everyone from medical labs to radiology, willing to lower their prices for cash patients like his.
"I know who charges a good price and who has a good heart," says Parkinson. Physicians, too, contact him, saying, "I'd like to be a part of your unspoken network."
Parkinson says part of the reason he went into this kind of practice is because he believes the healthcare system, with its lack of transparency in pricing, is cheating patients, especially the uninsured."The system is broken and there is no real way to fix it without someone who is willing to confront the industry."
But some medical professionals don't see Parkinson's model as a fix.
"Really what this is called is boutique medicine," says Dr. Aaron Nayfack, 29, a resident at Los Angeles County Hospital. "You pay a retainer fee to a physician who agrees to be available to you, reachable in the middle of the night. The problem is, who gets left behind? What about those who can't afford to put a physician on retainer?"
Critics also accuse Parkinson of cherry picking from the healthiest age group and some have raised concerns about patient privacy in online communications.
Parkinson communicates with some of his patients via webcam.
Parkinson says that's not an issue since all of his online interactions are done with user names created by the patients. He also counsels them to keep private matters for their face-to-face visits.
Regardless of these concerns, Parkinson seems to be on to something. He says he's already signed up more than 50 patients and his website gets more than 10,000 hits each day.
And if that's not enough, he's also become a cause celebre, with everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the Today Show calling about his unorthodox practice. Parkinson says there have even been discussions about a reality TV series.
It's a personal examination this Internet age doctor is happy to entertain at least for now.
-Producer: Jamie Rubin
-Video Editor: Didrik Johnck
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