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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Going Back to College


Every summer, a hundred Brazilian adolescents descend on UCLA’s dormitories to study English. When one gets sick, a counselor phones April Travel Insurance which phones me.


Middle-class teenagers suffer respiratory infections, upset stomachs, and minor injuries, so, once I learned to deal with UCLA’s draconian parking policy, I found these easy visits.

I graduated UCLA fifty years ago, and returning is a strange experience. Crowds outside the dormitories shriek, laugh, and chatter. It sounds like a kindergarten. Were we that noisy? There's nothing strange about the women's fashions, but the men look like dorks. My generation had long hair and tight clothes. Nowadays it’s short hair and baggy clothes. They wear shorts. Don’t they realize how silly they look? We kept books in lockers. Now everyone has a backpack. Especially odd is the number of Asians who make up over a third of the enrollment. They speak perfect English, so they’re clearly American. Where were they when I attended?

In my day, when you entered a university building, you found a door and entered. Today all doors except the main entrance are locked. Students manning the front desk consider names and room numbers privileged information. Using the elevator requires a key which all students carry. This is identical to hotel security and probably no more effective.


On arriving, I phone a counselor who comes down to escort me. The dorm rooms are tinier than I remember, and little studying occurs because the desks are piled with personal items. Delivering medical care is easy, but it’s summer, and foreigners believe that air conditioning is unhealthy, so the rooms are hot.      


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Bringing the Housecall into the 21st Century


Housecall agencies spring up regularly. I keep track of them so I saw Medicast’s web site when it came to life a few months ago.

During an interview with two energetic founders, I learned that they plan to bring the housecall into the 21st century, slashing the cost with volume, marketing, and digital technology. They would launch in June 2014 after a massive marketing campaign. Doctors were rushing to sign up, they added.

I agreed to join them but declined the canvas carry-all they were offering, preferring to keep my traditional doctor’s bag. A handout listed required drugs and supplies which Medicast would sell to its physicians, but they agreed that I could handle my own selection.

They gave me an Ipad Mini. All their doctors receive one. Potential customers download the Medicast app which gives them the choice of signing up for a paying program that provides free housecalls or paying nothing and summoning a doctor when they need one. Clicking the app connects them to a dispatcher who records their credit card information and sends a text message to a doctor on-call. The program then automatically dials the client.

“Hotel guests phone my cell directly, or I phone them,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be quicker?”

“Doctors hate giving out their private numbers,” they explained. “This way you don’t appear on caller-ID, so patients can never bother you.”

A Los Angeles housecall costs $249 during business hours, $349 during nights and weekends. While this is in the ballpark of my fee, Medicast keeps about one third. Medicines and injections cost extra, so a Medicast doctor has the opportunity to earn more – a lot more if he’s creative, and some doctors show a positive genius in this area.

The app includes a tempting feature: a button a doctor can swipe to go “off call.” I don’t mind that hotels and insurance services phone 24 hours a day, but I sometimes can’t resist flipping the button when I go to bed.

Carrying the Ipad everywhere is a minor annoyance, and software bugs still make an appearance. If another doctor answers, the app doesn’t notice, so I’ve phoned patients who’ve already set up a housecall.

Business is brisk. My Ipad chirped nine times in June to announce a call although some may have been software glitches. All were from local residents, so they don’t overlap with my clients, but employees at two hotels have reported visits from a Medicast representative.