I always talk to my Lyft driver.

Recently, I was attending a conference in another city so I was taking a Lyft a couple of times a day.  As usual I am talking to the drivers.  When they found out I was a doctor, several told me that they were part of program that Lyft had to help people with chronic illness and without transportation get to doctors’ appointments.  How could this be?

HMOs and ACOs have discovered that a missed clinic appointment can easily turn into a costly hospitalization for uncontrolled HTN or DM.   A convergence of technology and healthcare policy leads to a commonsense idea of helping people get to the clinic and avoid a crisis.

I know that at this point some colleagues are decrying the Nanny State but I am more interested in what works and have a soft spot in my heart for the many people who are overwhelmed and need a helping hand.

Later that night I was reviewing the JAMA feed on my email and they alerted me to a series of studies that had demonstrated that hypothermia was not helpful with acute TBI (traumatic brain injury) and that two studies demonstrated that, High Flow Oxygen and use of Non-invasive Ventilation for people with respiratory failure did not improve survival or shorten days on a ventilator or in the ICU.   Good to know.

I wonder if a Lyft ride could have helped some avoid the ICU and respiratory failure altogether?  I am eagerly awaiting the result of the RCT.