Make America Healthy Again

I remember when the news didn't show the picture of a beautiful child every day who died within days from the flu. We used to have doctors who made home visits and entered your home with the black bag with vaccine shots and medicine. Mom didn't have to drag you to the hospital many times in cold weather. She didn't have to hope the pharmacy still had flu medicine on the shelves. Paying for prescription drugs wasn't so expensive. You didn't go to school with flu symptoms. Mom was home and you recovered in your bed with cold towels on your forehead to bring down the fever. We need to require doctors to make house calls again where the doctor brought to you those life saving emergency medicines.

Well if doctors won't make house calls anymore there is at least an app for that too. Now more than half of the hospitals in America offer some level of phone or on-line consultations. How do they do that with any accuracy without placing that classic stethoscope to your chest and listening to you breath? On-line services like HEAL are hoping to cut down on emergency room visits. HEAL has a doctor coming to your house service even if they are not your doctor who knows your medical history. The HEAL app users can cost you $20 less if you have medical insurance.

More and more people are using apps for everything in life from food deliveries to getting a ride somewhere.

Last year HEAL doctors solved 372 flu illnesses. This year so far HEAL helped 3,040 flue cases so far. The app advertises that their doctors are available when the doctors office isn't open or available for an appointment. The app promises that a licensed medical doctor will come to your home within two hours anytime between the hours of 8 am and 8 pm 365 days of the year. They sleep at night even if you can't. The app has been in existence since 2015 when the founder and CEO of HEAL, Nick Desai took his 7 month old child to the emergency room and waited 7 hours just to be seen with his sick baby. It was then that he decided that there has to be a better way for illnesses to be treated.

Apps like UBER changed the way we get a cab, Tinder changed the way we meet people and now HEAL hopes to change the way we get better. A doctor can visit you at home or at your office.

This kind of app health service appeals to the wealthy who want their privacy in an emergency as well as the working poor who doesn't have the time to go to the doctor. The basic reported problem is in a text on the app and as a nurse is driving the doctor to your home they are already researching possible treatment even before they see you.  Anyone with a flu should not have to go out into the cold and wait in a cold emergency room when seriously ill. Unfortunately HEAL is only available in 3 states so far. Southern California, San Francisco, Virginia and Washington D.C.

Congress needs to pass legislation to make services like this one available in all 50 states for all Americans. Anytime we can combine business, innovation and what is best for Americans together it is a formula of success for all.

Services like HEAL can charge only $20 per home visit because it can cut out 65% of the cost of  a doctor's office. There is no office, no receptionist and a streamlined accounting system. What isn't streamlined is the expertise of the health professional.  Let's make America Healthier Again.