Q. What is the basis for being able to prescribe diet herbal medicine through non-face-to-face consultations anywhere in the country?

The legal basis for non-face-to-face prescriptions lies in Article 34-2 of the Medical Act (Telemedicine), which allows Korean medicine doctors to provide remote consultations and prescriptions only for patients who have previously received in-person care. During COVID-19, initial consultations were temporarily permitted, but currently, first-time non-face-to-face visits are generally restricted. At our Baekrokdam Korean Medicine Clinic, we require all new patients to have an initial in-person visit to assess pulse (maek), tongue (seol), and abdominal palpation (bokjin) to accurately determine constitution and pathology before transitioning to remote follow-ups. In Western medicine, obesity is explained by energy imbalance, insulin resistance, and inflammatory responses in fat cells. In Traditional Korean Medicine, it is attributed to spleen deficiency (biheo) impairing water-dampness (suseup) metabolism, leading to phlegm-fluid retention (dameum) or blood stasis (eohyeol), which cause weight gain and metabolic slowdown. Without addressing this pathology, simply using heat-clearing or laxative herbs often leads to rebound weight gain or stomach discomfort. The advantage of non-face-to-face care is the ability to manage patients consistently without time or space constraints. For example, office workers can have video calls during lunch to review meal logs and fine-tune herbal dosages, resulting in better compliance and outcomes. The limitation is the lack of direct palpation and pulse diagnosis. Therefore, I recommend a combination of an in-person initial consultation followed by remote follow-ups, which has proven effective for long-term weight management when the constitution is accurately assessed at the start.