I think a call center is a good idea -- you can call in with your symptoms and they can tell you that it's minor just take some Tylenol and enter the symptoms into the system. They can also tell you that based on your symptoms to call them back if the the condition continues, if you start to experience a fever, etc.

I've called the doctor before (talked to a nurse), and told her my symptoms and asked if I should come in -- they said that if the condition persisted then I should come in, but there were a lot of people with the same flu in the area and rest/fluids would take care of it.

I think the more we can standardize medicine the better, it is a mess of a science. With machine learning and the rapid pace of new sensor development hopefully we'll be able to get more automated care -- that can be reviewed by a doctor/nurse to make sure it's ok.

The economics of call centers are no different than having nurses on staff -- how many people can you treat an hour.

A doctor's office --- or even a regional medical center --- has different scaling pressures than a call center. Call centers are centralized. They're more strongly incentivized to:

* Ramp up new hires as cheaply as possible

* Keep staff maximally interchangeable and minimally accountable

* Keep their resources as close to oversubscribed as possible

A doctor's office has these same pressures, but on a much smaller scale. It is a big deal for your doctor to hire a new full-time nurse. Patients will interact with staff face-to-face and at length. As busy as the office gets during busy hours, there are prolonged lulls.

Call centers also win several extra problems that a doctor's office doesn't have:

* Terrible continuity across multiple calls

* The need to talk lay people through basic medical testing (ever tried to do tech support for someone who doesn't know how to use a mouse?)

* The personnel management problems of having multiple tiers of support staff.

I don't have any arguments about standardizing medicine. If you reread anything I've written today, I'm in favor of the nurse practitioner model, and I see the problem with relying on full-service medical doctors. I just think call centers are terrible for consumers.