The ER's in urgent need of a fix

One study says half of ER cases don't belong there.

An emergency at the ER. Recent research from the New England Healthcare Institute found that roughly a quarter of all emergency-room visits were for non-urgent issues, and another quarter could have been addressed (or prevented) by a visit to a doctor's office. Harvard Pilgrim Health Care chief executive Charles Baker studies the research and suggests the healthcare system should do more to keep those patients out of the ER.

We all read stories all the time about how crowded the ER is at many local hospitals, and the burden this puts on the care delivery system. We usually assume [incorrectly] this is due to inappropriate use that's driven by uninsured people seeking the only source of open access care that's available to them. We also assume, correctly, that this is a pretty expensive and inefficient use of health care delivery resources. ER's typically cost about 2-5 times more than a physician's office to treat non-emergency conditions. National statistics put the cost of treating non-urgent conditions in ERs at about $21 billion. In 2005, non-urgent care in the ER in Massachusetts cost about $1 billion - or around 40 percent of all ER charges.

These stats, all by themselves, make Minute Clinics and their various clinical incarnations a no-brainer. How can anyone who believes that health care costs are too high look at this data and presume that a Minute Clinic is a bad idea?
www.letstalkhealthcare.org

Can you see me now? Entrepreneur Chris Herot wonders whether videoconferencing technology will finally be widely adopted, after a half-century of being "just around the corner."

A new crop of companies are entering the video calling space: Sightspeed, ooVoo, Tokbox, and Skype. Sightspeed and ooVoo have the highest quality video and most features, such as multi-party video calls. In particular, ooVoo has developed patent-pending technology to synchronize the audio and video, an issue that is especially vexing on the less-than-perfect Internet connections available to many consumers. Tokbox uses Adobe Flash and thus requires no software to be installed . . . Skype has the advantage of a huge base of users who adopted the product as a way to make cheap phone calls, but is the most cumbersome to install and use.

So will any of these companies finally move video calling from a niche product to the mainstream? The processor speed and bandwidth today have certainly made quality video available to the masses, but there is still the "coolness factor" to be dealt with.

This final ingredient may be social networking. Indeed, Seesmic has made video messaging cool through deft use of social software. They do not currently support real-time, interactive video, but it would be a logical extension of their paradigm. . . . There is still a lot of experimentation to be done, and the winner may be the company that is not only the most creative but also the most willing to experiment and the quickest to incorporate what they learn.
herot.typepad.com/cherot

Have I got a mouse for you. A Yankee Group analyst says the Logitech V550 Cordless Laser Mouse, a $60 accessory, has simplified his laptop usage.

Simply, the mouse comes bundled with a clip that attaches to your laptop lid thus providing a "docking station" for your mouse when on the go. No extra pockets needed. No cords to avoid getting tangled. Just a quick way to have the functionality of a mouse with minimal additional inconveniences.
blogs.yankeegroup.com

Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.