Reducing the cost of unnecessary emergency room visits was the subject of the winning entry for the first Startup Weekend focusing on healthcare in which entrepreneurs assembled to brainstorm their approaches to reduce healthcare costs, improve access to information or tackle obesity.
QuickSeeMD’s web-based tool provides alternatives to the ER by giving users the locations of nearby clinics and physician practices based on where they live. The tool is designed to cut down on the perceived cost of unnecessary ER visits estimated at $4 billion .
Users can also choose a specialty from pediatrics, imaging, gynecology and obstetrics.It would be sold to a private payer in Philadelphia or New York before expanding into other metropolitan areas like Boston and in a year would be expanded as an app for consumers, according to the pitch.
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It is a particularly important issue as hospitals try to pare down costs as they implement health care reform. And it’s an issue near and dear to the hearts of insurers and states trying to cut healthcare costs and the hospitals on the receiving end of those cuts.
Earlier this year, Washington state passed some dramatic legislation in which the state Medicaid program would no longer pay for “medically unnecessary” emergency room treatment. Instead the cost would be passed on to the doctors and hospitals. Among the 500 conditions listed as non medical emergencies are hypoglycemic coma, asthma attacks and chest pain, conditions that some might consider emergencies. The governor later suspended the policy.
Quick See MD team member Lon Hecht acknowledged the complex issue of educating people as to what really is an emergency without discouraging them from calling 911 if they need to. He said its website would seek to provide some guidance on what does and does not constitute an emergency situation.
The company beat 11 other competitors in the Philadelphia competition from a group that had been whittled down from 37 ideas pitched the first night of the event as teams and ideas were consolidated.
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Among the other companies participating in the event was Bevbuddy, which tried to solve the problem of excessive calorie intake through beverages. It estimated that 22 percent of calories people consume come from beverages like soft drinks and alcohol. Health Here and Now developed a mobile app to help users find and schedule healthy products and service to meet their health profile. Another company called FoodMood developed an app so that users could figure out what foods made them feel good and others less so.
One of the crowdpleasers to emerge from the event was a gaming app aimed at medical students called StumptheMD, in which users can either answer medical questions or post them and is currently free. It is seeking to partner with academic institutions in the region but also sees scope for its use among non medical professionals such as caregivers and people curious about medicine.
The inaugural event is part of the Startup Weekend series held worldwide in which entrepreneurs present ideas for a company Friday evening and build teams of developers and coders to develop a product in 54 hours and then pitch it to a team of judges.
Dr. Elliot Menschik of Venturef0rth, who hosted the event, said the next time he holds the event he would seek to get more companies involved from the region’s medical and pharmaceutical industries. He added he would aim to have it at a time when local universities are in session.
