Dive Brief:
- Several startups across the US are providing non-emergency in-person visits using different models.
- Although most services do not accept insurance, the time and cost savings for patients is potentially huge.
- According to the Wall Street Journal, these services represent a new part of the sharing economy, where technology connects providers with excess capacity and consumers who want on-demand services. Also, the boom in mobile medical technology provides portable equipment.
Dive Insight:
Many of the services are billing themselves as an "Uber for healthcare," and the Journal says they haven't met the opposition as seen in ride-sharing services from taxi drivers. The reason, the article says, is because the services hire licensed medical practitioners who are happy to work the extra hours.
"I love my Pager shifts - it's back to real medicine, just you and the patient," Kimberly Henderson, an ER physician at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, told the Journal.
Some office-based physicians fear the new services will fragment health care delivery, but the services say they will send reports to patient's primary physicians on request. Many people who try the service become repeat clients. "Once you've had pizza delivered, you rarely go pick up pizza again," Thompson Aderinkomi, a healthcare economist and founder of RetraceHealth, told the Journal.