I wonder if heavily subsidizing the cost of transport and antivenom for selected victims where it would be available in time might be part of the solution. That has a lot of contingencies—you need a high enough index of suspicion, nearby-enough antivenom, early enough recognition, and a source of transporting either the victim or the antivenom (preferably both). But it seems like subsidizing access to antivenom that is available could be highly cost-effective when those criteria are met.
(One of the things I like about ideas centered around saving rural patient populations money is that there is an implied lower bound of ~ 1.0X cash transfers as long as the patient would have been as well off if they were given the $100ish as they were having been given the antivenom.)
Yep I really agree that a well targeted fund to transport patients with dangerous conditons that urgently need higher level care (obviously not only snakebite) could be a HIGHLY cost-effective intervention, if difficult to pull off at scale.
Love a bit of Fermi napkin stuff so...
Imagine on average transport costs paidwere $50 per severe patient, and this saved conservatively an extra 1 life every 50 patients referred (entirely plausible). That’s 2500 for a life, and there would be additional benefits on top of only life saved, including quicker recoveries and probably uncovering some underlying diseases as well.
Its the kind of thing we could probably manage as OneDay Health as our nurses would be great gatekeepers, but trying to do it on a larger statewide or countrywide scale would be very difficult with misuse and corruption likely to seriously reduce cost efficiency.
I was afraid of some of that. :(
I wonder if heavily subsidizing the cost of transport and antivenom for selected victims where it would be available in time might be part of the solution. That has a lot of contingencies—you need a high enough index of suspicion, nearby-enough antivenom, early enough recognition, and a source of transporting either the victim or the antivenom (preferably both). But it seems like subsidizing access to antivenom that is available could be highly cost-effective when those criteria are met.
(One of the things I like about ideas centered around saving rural patient populations money is that there is an implied lower bound of ~ 1.0X cash transfers as long as the patient would have been as well off if they were given the $100ish as they were having been given the antivenom.)
Yep I really agree that a well targeted fund to transport patients with dangerous conditons that urgently need higher level care (obviously not only snakebite) could be a HIGHLY cost-effective intervention, if difficult to pull off at scale.
Love a bit of Fermi napkin stuff so...
Imagine on average transport costs paidwere $50 per severe patient, and this saved conservatively an extra 1 life every 50 patients referred (entirely plausible). That’s 2500 for a life, and there would be additional benefits on top of only life saved, including quicker recoveries and probably uncovering some underlying diseases as well.
Its the kind of thing we could probably manage as OneDay Health as our nurses would be great gatekeepers, but trying to do it on a larger statewide or countrywide scale would be very difficult with misuse and corruption likely to seriously reduce cost efficiency.
Love the thinking.