His $1500 dollar startup is just the store front for his $100k+ medical education. There is already a staggering demand for any and all medical services.<p>Not as innovative as the headline made it sound.
Unless the statement in this posting[1] has changed in the few years since it was posted, this guy could lose his medical license over this... I'm all for using technology to make things easier, but something as regulated as the medical and pharmaceutical industry needs to be thought through and can't just use any third party tool to do what you want with.<p>[1] <a href="http://support.formstack.com/index.php?pg=forums.posts&id=80&pc=2" rel="nofollow">http://support.formstack.com/index.php?pg=forums.posts&i...</a>
Sounds like it changed health care for the people living in those two zip codes who don't want to go through the insurance company. Woohoo, but I'm still hosed.
Several questions immediately pop up from the article:<p>* "He watched doctors treat up to 40 patients a day". Is the article implying that is somehow bad in and of itself? If the doctor has staff to handle paper work, and doesn't travel to each patient, this seems to be more efficient. In economic terms, the doctor is maximizing his comparative advantage (treating patients)<p>* "It wasn't like this decades ago. ... there was so little overhead." What is the cause of this recent overhead? Certainly doctors had offices and staff decades ago, as they do now. Is it just the insurance part? If that's the case, then just simply perform fee-for-service; doctors are free to do that.
We have a doctor here in our little town in Western Massachusetts that is doing the same but set it up as a non-profit. He accepts barter as payment and supports other small providers with an open source EMR system:<p><a href="http://www.cottagemed.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=9" rel="nofollow">http://www.cottagemed.org/index.php?option=com_content&v...</a>