Pager, the Uber for Urgent Care, Brings Great Doctors to Your Door

mHealthNews reports that Pager, also known as "urgent care on wheels," is using an app to respond to house calls in Manhattan and Brooklyn from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Pager was founded by Oscar Salazar, one of Uber’s (an app that allows passengers to request rides from drivers) original technologists.

Pager is another example of the consumerization of enterprises or the move to the "sharing economy." Companies like LiquidSpace , Airbnb, Postmates, and oDesk  use the same model.  Some see this as a threat to small businesses and others see it as a way to bypass large corporations.

The peer-to-peer economy is catching on quickly and time will tell how Pager affects practitioners who own private practices and health care services as whole. Sara Eckel of BBC reports San Francisco cab companies have seen a 65% drop in taxi rides from January 2012 to July 2014 according to a report from the city's Municipal Transportation Authority.

Richard Boxer, the chief medical officer at Pager, claims that Americans want convenience and will pay for it. Even though telehealth technology has been trending, it does not offer patients actual physical examinations, which most patients desire. The logistics and implementation of the house call app will be discussed at the mHealth Summit 2014.

Tommy King is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of www.medicalgroups.com. Tommy's deep and unique knowledge of healthcare economics comes from several years of working with physician groups, commercial and governmental payors, practice managers, and professional healthcare investors from leading institutions across the country.  Prior to medicalgroups.com, Tommy was Director of Sales and Marketing for MedVision, a California-based RCM company. During this time, the company was recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies in Southern California by the Orange County Business Journal.