Just for a note as to my experience, there should be a "relinquish" or "Cancel" when setting up an appointment. I clicked next step and it booked my time temporarily. Ten minutes later it'll be open, but if you're releasing this you're going to want to allow us curious folks to cancel out.
InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what your qualifications are, but I've given mine -- a parent of 3 kids. Drugstores (in my area, anyways) are NOT able to handle ear infections because antibiotics require a physicians prescription. Urgent care facilities are always preferable to ER visits because they cost less for the patient and permit ER staff to handle true emergencies, there there are many instances where urgent care just isn't an…
Drugstores in Illinois and (I thought) California can handle this problem, when they are staffed by nurse-practitioners (as many Walgreens are). NP's are the future of US health care.
The list is much larger.
For example here is the list of states which CVS operates clinics in:
http://www.minuteclinic.com/en/USA/Clinics.aspx
Here is the list of conditions they can treat:
http://www.minuteclinic.com/en/USA/Treatment-and-Cost.aspx
Note "treat and write prescriptions" in the very first sentence on the page.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#43A killer idea. Every friend of mine that has had kids echoes my experience, which is that you end up going to the ER way more than you expect to --- your primary care pediatrician sends you there any time the answer to an "is it serious" phone call is "maybe".
If this scales, it will let me pick which of 4 local ER's I'm going to go to based on wait time. I'd pay $50 a visit for that. I'd subscribe to a service like this simply in anticipation of needing it eventually.
Good luck.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#44This is a great service but it seems unfortunate that it has to exist at all.
The health system in Canada isn't ideal (or the Netherlands where I am now) but having to check emergency room wait times has never even occurred to me.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
The drugstore clinics can certainly handle ear infections. There are also urgent care facilities in most areas that can be utilized.
The key phrase here is "middle of the night". How many areas have drugstore clinics that are open at 2am?
Better question, what is the likelihood that a hospital near most residents are busy enough at 2am where wait times are extremely excessive that you need to use a service like this to "schedule" your visit? I would imagine that the likelihood decreases considerably during the "middle of the night" especially when taking into consideration that there are probably more hospitals that are not level 1 trauma centers and/or county run facilities and are often the busiest between 11am and 11pm.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#46I'm not sure I comprehend this. Isn't it the role of the emergency services to prioritise your visit? If you're critical you'll get seen, otherwise you wait. If you're capable of shopping around for the best appointment time then shouldn't you be seeing a GP instead?
This service doesn't bypass triage. It just puts your name and info on the triage list and allows you to wait from home instead of taking up space in the waiting room. The hospitals are (apparently) intensely involved in this process.
Bingo. Most patients fall into the general "low-acuity" category, which means that they are essentially seen in the order in which they arrive at the ER; this is the default case in our system. However, the ED caregivers do have the ability to change it.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#47Wow I think you have a great idea. We really need something like this in Canada. What are your rates? I couldn't find them on the site. Oh, and one last question: where you funded by YC?
Ontario?
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#48Great idea, but why focus on the ER in your branding? The question that the end user has is "How can I get treatment for this health problem as soon as possible, without having to wait around in a waiting room"? It seems like the way that you're answering this could easily be extended to clinics and urgent care centers, couldn't it?
Also, I echo the calls for a map-based or local-search interface.
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what your qualifications are, but I've given mine -- a parent of 3 kids. Drugstores (in my area, anyways) are NOT able to handle ear infections because antibiotics require a physicians prescription. Urgent care facilities are always preferable to ER visits because they cost less for the patient and permit ER staff to handle true emergencies, there there are many instances where urgent care just isn't an…
I'm not sure how being a parent provides qualification in assessing the practicality of this startup, but if it does, then I would like to weigh in on this issue as I am a parent of 2. These clinics are typically staffed at least by a nurse practitioner, who can treat and prescribe medications (depending on the state) for almost any reasonable non-urgent condition, including antibiotics. If you live in a state where…
My guess is there are a lot fewer of these clinics and the majority don't have access to them.
There are 5,700 hospitals in the U.S.(AHA) and ~ 4,500 emergency rooms.
Do you know how many of these clinics there are?
Re: InQuickER: See the ER doc in 15 minutes or less, or your ER visit is free
#50What this service does, if I'm reading this right, is bypass the stage where you talk to a triage nurse - you're triaged based on what you report is wrong with you, as opposed to what a nurse sees is wrong with you.
Do you have any mechanisms in place for two-way communication between the hospital and the people booking appointments? Specifically, I'm thinking about situations where a series of individually minor symptoms may collectively indicate something major is going on, but that a layman wouldn't know.
Like let's say that I go on your site and see that I can get an appointment at an ER in three hours, so I book that because I'm feeling slightly off. My symptom description seems innocuous enough - went for a walk in the countryside, right arm is tingling a bit, small red bump on my leg, etc. - but to someone trained in medicine they indicate that I've been poisoned by some sort of tick, and I need treatment ASAP, as opposed to in three hours. Is there a way for the nurse who processes this reservation into the hospital to call me and say "screw the booking, get here now!"?