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Sitting at her home computer in the evening after work, she spent 10 minutes on a secure Web site answering the same kind of questions Dienst would have asked her during an office visit.

The next morning, she not only had heard back from her doctor, Travel Health Insurance she had the prescription antibiotic and cough medicine that he had called in to her nearby pharmacy.

The cost to her for the online consultation: zero. Her insurance company, Cigna, paid Dienst $35 for the virtual office visit, and under her health plan Steinert had no co-pay (compared with a $20 co-pay for an office visit).

"I'm not into computers," said Steinert, 57. "But this was easy. It's a good idea."

It's a good idea for doctors, too, said Dienst, who is among the first physicians in Central Florida to conduct online, reimbursed consultations with patients.

With three major health-insurance plans now reimbursing physicians for online consultations, Dienst expects he'll soon have plenty of company.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida has reimbursed a limited number of online visits for nearly four years, with roughly 1,000 doctors now capable of offering the service. But it's been slow to catch on, with Blue Cross officials estimating the total number of monthly online visits statewide at about 50, with fewer than a dozen being submitted for reimbursement.

"We might have gotten in too early," acknowledged Lynn Monson, the company's director of health-information technology. "But, by gum, we're ready for tomorrow. We see this taking off."

One reason for Monson's optimism is that two other major health insurers, Cigna and Aetna, announced in December they would go national with reimbursements for virtual house calls made through the RelayHealth network.

RelayHealth, the same online health-care communication service used by Blue Cross, Travel Health Insurance was founded in 1999 and acquired in 2006 by the health-care information-technology giant McKesson Corp.

Dienst, whose office has been a RelayHealth pilot site for more than a year, said that more than 300 of his patients have signed up to use it. He estimated he was conducting at least 10 online consultations a week, with patients typically getting a response from their queries within an hour or two on weekdays.

He is quick to point out that the Web visits are only for non-urgent medical problems and only for patients he already knows. "Mostly what we get are sore throats, ear aches, sinuses acting up," Dienst said. "Everybody who uses it I've seen at least once, probably more."

He typically receives $25 to $30 for an online consultation, with patient co-pays ranging from 0 to $10. Careful patient selection is critical. "There are definitely patients I would not treat through this," said Dienst, because not all patients are trustworthy and some don't understand the limitations of a consultation that is not face-to-face.

David Gunsteens of Parrish Medical Center, whose responsibilities include recruiting and retaining physicians in northern Brevard County, said more than a dozen primary-care physician offices in his area would have the capability to offer online consultations by the end of this year.

He predicted a significant upswing during the next year or two in the number of primary-care physicians offering online consultations, Travel Health Insurance and within a few years "the vast majority of family-practice physicians" will be offering it.

Patients already are starting to demand it, he noted, and as physician offices increasingly adopt electronic medical-record systems, doctors will be able to meet the demand.