Brad Jones wrote about an unexpected healthcare cost reduction method:

• Getting into an ambulance can cost patients over $1,000 in the US.
• A study found that in cities where ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft are available, there is a 7% reduction in the number of people who travel in ambulances.
• There are dangers. A patient might call an Uber to the nearest hospital – only to find that hospital doesn’t have the right kinds of specialists, wasting what could be crucial time as the patient is moved to another hospital.
• But as long as patients are using them for non-critical emergencies it should reduce the demand for ambulance services, improving overall response times.
• This should also help reduce the overall cost of healthcare in the United States – which on a per capita basis is the highest in the world.

Read more on Futurism.

Via: Marginal Revolution

The BBC reports that soon patients could be haggling with ambulance drivers over the meter:

• Ambulance drivers in Beijing decide how much to charge patients for their services. As the process is opaque this has led to complaints about overcharging.
• To deal with this, ambulances in Beijing will be installing taxi style meters for transparent fare calculations.
• The meter will record $7.50 for a 3km trip, and an additional $1 for every kilometer thereafter.
• Users have pointed out that this could lead to an unfortunate situation, where an ambulance takes a passenger in critical condition on a longer route to the hospital, to maximize earnings.

Centives has previously covered how Russians use ambulances as personal taxis, and the sports car ambulance that Dubai is considering.

Read more about Beijing’s ambulance meters here.

Source: BBC

Via: Marginal Revolution

Peter Eavis wrote about air ambulances:

• The air ambulance business has been booming. Since insurers usually pay the costs, companies have expanded their fleets and increased their coverage.
• The ambulances save lives. However they’re falling upon hard times since insurers are beginning to ask consumers to pay more of their bills.
• Moreover rapid growth in the industry has left it with a problem of oversupply, with each helicopter flying a fifth less than it used to in 2006.
• Costs are high. Helicopters start at about $4 million and can cost much more.
• The average flight is estimated to cost anywhere between $7,400 and $10,000.
• The average bills has gone up from $17,200 five years earlier to $40,800 now.
• Those who go out of business first might be the non-profit ones who don’t have cash buffers for a decrease in demand.

Read about the lobbyists that the industry has hired, the lengths that companies will go to, to collect debts, and many more details here.

Source: The New York Times

We’ve covered both drones and ambulances in the past. Our interest was piqued, then, when one inventor put the two together. NDTV reported:

• A student has developed a drone that can transport lifesaving medical equipment at 100 km/h.
• When an emergency call is received the drone can be dispatched to the patient’s location using the GPS location from the phone of either the victim or a bystander.
• Live audio and video feeds provide crucial information to doctors working remotely.
• The drone is currently configured to transport a defibrillator to a patient, but it could be equipped with other items such as an oxygen mask or insulin injection.
• Each drone is expected to cost approximately €15,000

Read about the drone, details of how it works, a cost benefit analysis, and more over here.

Source: NDTV

Dubai is considering building the next generation of ambulances wrote Alex Davies:

• The wealthy emirate is looking into Lotus Evoras and a pair of Ford Mustangs to act as emergency response vehicles.
• With a top speed of 260 Km/h the “ambulances” should be able to get to the scene of incidents much quicker than typical vehicles.
• Given that the cars don’t really have room to carry patients, they would instead be equipped with emergency medical equipment to stabilize patients until slower ambulances got to the scene.
• Experts (sourpusses) point out that the money is being wasted entirely since after a certain point, response times actually matter very little in determining patient outcomes.
• They also note that emergency vehicles travelling at several hundred kilometers per hour through a crowded metropolis could well create more patients than they help.

Read about the vehicles, what the government things, what the experts know, and more over here.

Source: Wired

Having pioneered the use of ambulances as taxis, the Russians are at it again with the taxi tank:

• A company in Russia is using former military vehicles as taxis.
• The vehicles are painted pink to seem less intimidating.
• Since St. Petersburg has various rivers and channels that can only be circumvented through traffic clogged bridges, the amphibious taxi can be timesavers.
• The company’s slogan is “a safer taxi” since passengers won’t have to worry about getting injured in a traffic accident (unless there’s an RPG involved).

Read more about the taxis, and see some incredible photos here.

Source: English Russia

We’ve previously covered the ambulance drone. Greg Kumparak wrote about its younger brother, the lifeguard drone:

• Project Ryptide is a self-inflating life preserver ring.
• It can attach to most common drones. A lifeguard can then control it using their phone and have it drop the life preserver next to a drowning person.
• The ring will automatically inflate upon contact with water.
• The system will be on kickstarter and is expected to cost about $99 (drone not included).

Read more about it here.

Source: Techcrunch