Healthcare has barely begun to scale — to get more care from fewer doctors, nurses and hospitals. But we can glimpse the scalable future in asynchronous telemedicine, where patients and doctors interact remotely, but not simultaneously (analogous to email). Dr. Jason Hwang is a pioneer in this area.
Medical professionals often ask me two questions: “How can we lower healthcare costs?” and “How can we medical professionals shore up our bottom lines?” My response is, “You realize ‘healthcare costs' are you, right?”
If “lower healthcare costs” means lower aggregate spending, then as Megan McArdle recently wrote, “Americans must use less care,” and healthcare professionals must be “less numerous and less well paid.”
