Consulting a doctor

I know just one person who visits a doctor with remarkable frequency. In most cases, the visit to the doctor is delayed until the agony is worse than the agony of going to a doctor! Something does not seem right. An article in http://techcrunch.com/tag/ medlion/ led me to http://www.medlion.com/ which featured the Medlion service. This began as a reaction against health care becoming very expensive because of medical insurance. However, a significant fact mentioned by Techcrunch website is that "like many direct primary-care practices, more than half their patient interactions are via electronic means, as patients aren’t forced by reimbursement rules to visit the office of the care-provider for something that could be done simply over the phone or via email."

Perhaps a home visit by a physician is no longer an option. For critical cases, hospitals may be the better option—but in many cases, an email, SMS, a brief discussion over the phone, or a video call may be adequate to decide the best course of action. Perhaps it can help us move towards the ancient Chinese system of rewarding doctors.

Doctors in Ancient China were paid only as long as their patients were healthy. As soon as the patient fell ill, payment to the doctor stopped! Chinese medicine lays tremendous emphasis on the preventive aspect of medicine (http://www.wholebodybalance. com/acucpuntureflu.htm).

Given the penetration of mobile phones and the increasing density of smartphones, I hope physicians in India start a similar model. The use of open source applications will make it far easier for the concept to spread.

You should be able to communicate with a doctor, rather than follow the advice of a commercial that was banned, which stated: “You know something is going to be wrong with you, but you don’t yet know what it is. Take X and kill it before it hits you!”