Photo by US Army Africa 
There is nothing worse than being sick—except, perhaps, having to go to the doctor when you’re sick. By the end of this ordeal, you’re pretty sure that visiting the doctor has made you even sicker than you were before.
Patients waste 1.2 billion hours each year in waiting rooms to see a doctor. Since it is often impossible to get a doctor’s appointment quickly enough, going to the emergency room seems like the only way to get immediate care or relief from pain.
Doctors and entrepreneurs around the country are joining forces to try to make the miserable doctor’s visit a thing of the past. Two years later, in 2012, he founded a company called Retrace Health, essentially a doctor on-demand service. “Think of it as the Uber of health care,” he tells me.
If Uber has had considerable trouble navigating the complexities of the taxi industry, Aderinkomi is facing an even harder battle in his ambitious attempts to remake the health care system.
Other entrepreneurs are beginning to roll out similar in-home doctor’s visits. A 2013 startup called Pager launched to brings doctors to patients’ homes in New York City for $199 a visit, while Teladoc and MDLIVE offer immediate access to doctors via video chat.
The name “McKesson” may ring a bell because it is emblazoned on many medical supplies and equipment you encounter when you visit your doctor’s office; the company makes everything from syringes and medical gloves to the patient database and billing software found in health care facilities. With tentacles throughout the health care industry, McKesson needs to think strategically about how the industry will evolve over the next few years.
As a result, patients now care more about transparency in medical costs than ever before.
Companies are rushing in to help consumers make better decisions about where to spend their health care dollars. The platform is essentially Yelp and OpenTable rolled into one, but for health care: patients can check out reviews of doctors in their neighborhood, find openings in their schedules and then book an appointment directly from the app or webpage.
Instead of waiting weeks to see your doctor when you have a cold, you can now go to your local drugstore, see a nurse, pick up your medications and be home in an hour. “You have to be realistic when it comes to health care because it is a slow moving system,” McKesson’s Zubiller tells me.
So Retrace Health’s Aderinkomi might have to wait longer than he might like before health care is optimized to be both cost effective and convenient for patients.
Source: FastCompany
The post Doctor Visits Are So 2014 appeared first on Azalea Health.