House calls are dead! Long live the new house call!

That’s one way of summing up a recent article at PYMNTS about the efforts of a company called 98point6 to tap AI to help both patients and providers when the former want to see a doctor but the latter are worried about overloaded waiting rooms in the age of COVID-19.

One potential solution to the problem, proposes Robbie Cape, the company’s CEO and co-founder, is “text-based primary care” that can be available 24/7 via their new mobile app. With the app, explains the article, a patient can “start a visit and immediately enter into what Cape said is an asynchronous visit with an automated assistant (which gathers the necessary health-related info), and then a board-certified primary care provider. . . A provider (who is also an employee of the company), joins the conversation and can help deliver a complete care plan that is accessible via phone.”

Assuming a treatment plan is determined, Cape said the app, the services of which are available entirely on a membership basis, can follow up with patients “over the ensuing hours, days and even weeks to see how they are progressing.”

Interestingly, while there’s a lot of talk in healthcare entrepreneurial circles about being “disruptive,” Cape says “we have no plan, interest or desire to disrupt the healthcare industry. This may be a controversial view, maybe an unpopular view, for a technology company. We believe that the healthcare industry in the United States is more functional than it is dysfunctional.” 

Instead, he says, the firm seeks to “bend certain curves with respect to healthcare,” and in particular primary care. That means bending the cost curve, the actual cost of delivery, down while bending the curve tied to the quality of care up.

One way of doing that, Cape says, is to revive the relationship between primary care providers and their patients in the name of reducing the proliferation of instances where patients put off seeking help until it means a trip to the significantly more expensive ER.

“Healthcare needs to meet people where they are,” notes the article, “via phones and tablets, where they allocate their time — as opposed to asking people to come to meet healthcare.”

To which Cape replies, “That’s what the app experience is all about.”