Telehealth for CIRS and Mold Illness: Treating Patients in Pennsylvania and Across the Country

Yes, CIRS Can Be Treated by Telehealth — Prescriptions Included

A lot of mold-illness patients assume they have to find a specialist within driving distance, or give up because no one nearby treats Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS). For Pennsylvania residents, and for patients across the country willing to travel to Pittsburgh once a year, that's usually not the barrier it seems.

Most of CIRS care — the part that actually moves the needle — can be handled by telehealth, including the prescriptions. Here's how it works, and where the in-person pieces come in.

What telehealth handles

The bulk of CIRS treatment is history-taking, lab interpretation, and prescribing — all of which work over video. In a telehealth visit I can:

Review your history and exposures — the long-form intake that most rushed appointments skip. This is where the diagnosis usually starts to come together.

Order the full CIRS workup — the labs are drawn at a Quest or LabCorp near you, and the mail-away kits come to your home. You don't travel for testing.

Interpret results and build the treatment plan — the pattern across your markers, read in the context of CIRS, and sequenced into an actual protocol.

Prescribe — this is the part most online mold-illness care can't do. As a licensed physician, I prescribe the full range of CIRS treatment: bile acid sequestrants like cholestyramine and Welchol, compounded nasal protocols, VIP, and the supporting therapies your labs call for. No supplement-only workarounds.

For Pennsylvania patients

If you live in Pennsylvania, telehealth is straightforward — whether you're in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Erie, or anywhere between, your care can be handled by video with labs drawn locally, and in-person visits in Pittsburgh available whenever you'd prefer to be seen face to face.

For patients from out of state

I care for people from all over the country, and I love that they make the trip. The way it works is simple: you come to Pittsburgh once a year for an in-person visit, and we handle everything between those visits by telehealth. The office is about a 40-minute Uber from Pittsburgh International Airport, out where the air is clean and easy to breathe — a good place to land when you've been unwell. Most people come because a physician who truly knows CIRS and can prescribe for it is hard to find close to home, and once a year plus telehealth turns out to be far easier than years of searching for someone local.

Working with Dr. Vukelic

I'm a Shoemaker-certified physician and co-author of a peer-reviewed review of CIRS published in Annals of Medicine and Surgery (2024, PMID 39649915). I see patients in person in Pittsburgh and by telehealth — throughout Pennsylvania, and nationally through an annual in-person visit with telehealth follow-up. The initial consultation covers your health history, environmental exposures, symptoms, and records; from there, testing and treatment proceed much as they would entirely in person, because for CIRS, most of it can.

If you've been stuck without a local option, telehealth — anchored by a visit when it's needed — may be the option you were missing.

Dr. April Vukelic, D.O.
Recover From Mold, Pittsburgh — in person, and by telehealth in Pennsylvania and nationwide