Telemedicine, telehealth, a virtual GP: different names for seeing a doctor without travelling to one. Here it is a video consultation with Dr Kevin Navarro Gera, who practises from the clinic inside Potter's Pharmacy in Paceville.
When the connection is poor
Video needs a steady connection, and hotel rooms and basement flats do not always have one. When the picture cannot keep up, the call drops to voice by itself rather than freezing, and you can try video again with one tap.
If the call fails altogether there is a written chat, and voice messages that get through on a line too weak for live sound. The consultation is not lost with the signal.
What happens to what you send
Photographs, messages and voice messages you send are deleted after seven days. What the doctor writes up is sent to your app and your email.
The full policy is at pacevilledoctor.com/privacy.
How a consultation works
- Open the app or the website and give your name and email once. There is no password to remember.
- Say in a line or two what is wrong. A photo often helps — a rash, a swelling, a test result.
- Call. Dr Kevin Navarro Gera answers within minutes when he is free; otherwise you wait in line and your phone rings at your turn.
- Anything he writes up afterwards reaches you in the app and by email, usually within minutes.
- The €25 is settled at Potter's Pharmacy when you collect. Nothing is taken from a card during the call.
What a consultation can cover
The same things a GP sees in a morning: a chest or urine infection, a rash, a migraine, food poisoning, an ear that will not clear, a repeat of something you already take.
Where the assessment supports it, the doctor writes a prescription, and any licensed Maltese pharmacy dispenses it. Where a consultation shows that someone is unfit for work or for an activity, he puts that in writing too. Both are clinical judgements reached during the consultation.
A screen is not enough for everything. A wound that needs stitching, a suspected fracture, chest pain, anything needing hands or equipment — the doctor says so during the call and sends you where you need to go.
Receipts and insurance
Every consultation that is paid for produces a receipt, and it arrives in the app and by email — not as a slip of paper to lose on the way out. It names you, the date, the doctor and his registration, and what was paid.
That is what an insurer asks for. If you are claiming on private or travel insurance, or through an employer's scheme, you open the receipt in the app and send it on.
Where a prescription is written, the receipt is part of the same document, with the doctor's fee and any medicines listed separately so a claim can be made against either.
Opening hours
Video consultations
8am to midnight, every day, all year.
The pharmacy and clinic door
June to 31 October: 8am to midnight.
November to May: 8am to 8pm.
Sundays and public holidays follow the national pharmacy roster.
Where to find us
Paceville Doctor, inside Potter's Pharmacy
39 Triq il-Wilga, St Julian's STJ 3112, Malta
+356 2136 3244
A few minutes from the Paceville square, and a short drive from Sliema, Swieqi and Gzira.
Common questions
Who is the doctor?
Dr Kevin Navarro Gera, registered with the Malta Medical Council (reg. 1985). He is the same doctor who sees patients in person at the clinic in Paceville.
What if the doctor decides I need to be examined?
He tells you during the call. You can book the clinic in Paceville, or he directs you to the right service.
Does insurance cover telemedicine?
That depends on your policy. Every paid consultation produces a receipt naming the doctor and his registration, which is what insurers ask for.
When you need a doctor
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