Monday, November 16, 2015

The Future Of Medicine

This is the future of medicine...a job opportunity that came across our desk recently.

Northeast Healthcare Recruitment - Boise, ID
$300,000 a year
Location: Boise, ID Seeking Pediatricians to provide concierge medical services to employees of large, self-insured employers based nationwide. Work from home using this organizations telemedical platform.

Join this growing virtual medical practice enabling medical providers to see and care for patients online. This organization recruits patients and handles the mechanics of your online practice.

Over the next 24 months they contracted to deploy with 31 hospital systems and more than 2,000 large self-insured employers. They will be serving greater than 300,000 employees.

You will be provided with $1M/$3M medical malpractice insurance at no cost to you. Set your own rates, work whenever convenient and build an online practice. Through this platform providers will able to diagnose and prescribe. There is an integrated EHR system that allows you to order blood work and imaging. Engage your patient population through face-to-face live video, text+ and traditional in-person consultations. Doctors may dedicate themselves to the practice of online medicine or use as a complement to your existing traditional practice. This organization earns a small fee when commerce is conducted on the platform. An individual Doctor with no admin overhead (that's our job) can earn greater than $300,000* annually if based on a fully developed online practice. 


Eventually the future of medicine will be computers making most of the decisions for you and a lot fewer physicians actually making decisions or doing anything hands on but before we get to that point we have this step in between.  Rather then actually going to an office most of our common problems can be diagnosed or triage via a Skype call.  We will go to places like Walgreen to have our basic blood test done.  If you haven't heard of the company Theranos you should check it out.  It is amazing...well if it works it is amazing.  Basically you can go to a testing box (sort of like a red box) in a Walgreen, give a drop of blood and from that drop of blood they can do 30 plus test that used to take vials of blood at a fraction of the cost we now pay.  I know this because when I first heard about this company I had my sister pull up some recent blood work and we went to the online site of the two current facilities doing these test and we compared the prices.  The amount of information the can gather and the cost is truly amazing.  There is some skepticism among other scientist, although considering they are now in testing in two locations, one in California and one in Arizona I think it is maybe just a little bit of good caution of anything new and a little professional jealousy because if Elizabeth Holmes really did what she says she did (and the FDA has given her approval and she is in a trial market so I'm pretty sure she did) then she has changed the way medicine is done forever!  It is amazing.  And so here we are at a point where we are actually going to need fewer and fewer people to go into medicine.  The plus on this is there is actually a people shortage in medicine and this will honestly help.  The negative is we are talking about another professional that will need less people to man it and I don't know where that will equilibrium out.  At a time in our history when the worlds populations have grown to bigger then they ever have been before we continue to make scientific breakthroughs that make such a large population unnecessary.  It sounds great, we can all just sit on the beach drinking Mai Tais (virgin in my case) but we are still a society built on money for services and goods and in order to get that money people need actual jobs.  So while I'm definitely excited about this I'm also a little hesitant of where it will lead.  I'm also a little worried about a system that values how many patients you see and how little overhead you can generate over the actual quality of care you give.  I have a hard time believing that Skype doctoring on a productivity based incentive scale will lead to good bed side manner.    

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