- Joined
- Apr 24, 2017
I wonder how the hell yaniv coped before Babylon, ER visits I suspect. Yeah, I can see his sweaty little hands signing up for Premier. Orgasmic, he can whine several times per day about his suicidal anxiety and depression and then return to Babylon for his sniffles and abrasions. He'll have the best of both worlds with ambos and ER held in reserve, the ultimate.The for-profit Babylon telemed system Yaniv's abusing actually began in the U.K. - where it messed up NHS in a couple of different ways.
When Babylon launched in British Columbia a year ago in March with a budget of $1.5 million, Yaniv signed up immediately and started pestering them. It looks from what I've read so far like the Babylon doctors work for that company rather than in regular GP practices. The regular GPs don't like Babylon's favored status.
If a regular GP does a telemedicine visit, the health ministry pays them $34, nearly as much as for an in-person visit. In neighboring Alberta, it's $20. What I haven't been able to learn yet is whether Babylon gets $34 for each of Yaniv's yammering whine fests. In the UK, Babylon averages about £90 per patient = C$157 = US$110, but that's overall per year, not per call. (Yaniv tops that in just a week at the $34/visit BC rate.)
Most of the numbers being reported for Babylon anywhere in the world are tributes to the $2 billion the company's raised in capital, not about what government agencies are paying for offering Babylon, never mind how that stacks up with previous costs.
One unacknowledged benefit of Babylon may be drawing off traffic from hypochondriacs and munchausens who just have to talk to Doctor all the time because they're sweating after drinking hot chocolate. The GPs with office practices and the ERs are thus spared some of the shit load.
Babylon has competitors in Canada, by the way:
Last week [February 2019], Premier Health Group, a Vancouver tech developer for the healthcare industry, launched an app allowing patients to speak with mental health professionals through online video sessions. In a similar vein, Toronto-based Maple, creators of an online platform allowing people to access a doctor 24/7 by text or video, raised a $4 million Series A last year.
Has Yaniv signed up with Premier? LOL.
And now, for my coworkers at the Ministry of Funny Names:
- Babylon's chief medical officer is Mobasher Butt - possibly the best name any human has ever had.
- Juggy Sihota is the Telus VP in charge of their venture with Babylon and she says she's very excited.
- The head of digital emergency medicine at the University of British Columbia - to whom a Babylon doc referred Yaniv at one point - is Dr. Kendall Ho.
All he needs now, for the complete home package, is a trans exclusive whine-line.