Yesterday, the New York Times ran this piece about Dr. Jay Parkinson, the founder of Sherpaa.  Sherpaa functions somewhat like a virtual triage center manned by doctors sick of the medical status quo.  If you have an illness, ache, pain, rash, burn or really any health issue, the staff at Sherpaa will direct you to the appropriate means of treatment, provided your employer pays the $50/month per employee charge. If the condition can be treated without an in-person, nonvirtual, visit to a doctor, the doctors at Sherpaa will provide the means to do so. The neat thing is that they’ve caught up to the rest of the industrialized world and will treat patients via text message and email. The more iPhone photos of that weird mole on your arm, the better.

In terms of actually providing healthcare, it’s unclear from the Sherpaa website and the NYT article how the work their doctors do differs from that of underpaid triage nurses in nearly every medical clinic across the country.

A zillion questions came up when I read this article.  What is the protocol when an actual emergency occurs? How do they get paid? How does their malpractice insurance differ from that of an established clinic? How do they insure patient confidentiality and adherence to HIPAA? All of these questions will be answered…if they answer my email.

Regardless, the most important take away from Sherpaa and its recent publicity is that healthcare is ripe for change; almost anything is better than what we have now.  It takes the pioneering efforts of people like Dr. Parkinson to put their careers on the line and voyage into unknown territory.  So thanks, Dr. Parkinson, for taking a snide Gawker article and transforming it into a healthcare model that could have lasting effects on the industry.