What Can Substitute Teachers Do for City Schools? CityLab
The average teacher misses 9.4 days each school year. Total it up, and by high school graduation, a student will have spent six months of class-time with a substitute teacher. Rather than having a sub plod through an unfamiliar lesson plan or just distribute worksheets, a new model at two Boston schools places local experts in urban farming, animation, robotics, puppetry — you name it — at the blackboard to teach about their field.
Taxing Drivers by the Mile, Instead of at the Pump, The Denver Post
Hybrid and electric vehicles may be a boon to the atmosphere, but they’ve caused some headaches for government administrators, namely, how to pay for bridge and road repairs. Prius drivers travel farther on a tank — functionally discounting their share of the gas tax — so the Colorado Department of Transportation is testing the feasibility of a fairer standard: charging for each mile driven instead.
Can Hypothermia Save Gunshot Victims? The New Yorker
Most people who suffer a traumatic gunshot wound die within an hour. Having lost so much blood, their heart can no longer circulate what’s left. A new procedure at University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center, near Baltimore, buys more time by putting the body on ice. When a victim is wheeled in, doctors fill the body with freezing saline, pausing heartbeats and giving them just enough time to sew up the wounds.
Tag: medical procedures
How Crowdsourcing Medical Bills Can Usher in a New Era of Health Care Transparency
Clarification appended February 10, 2014.
Despite all the changes that the Affordable Care Act has brought to the U.S. health care industry, many patients still don’t know the up-front costs of common procedures and checkups. Enter Doctible (working title), a website that will allow patients to compare out-of-pocket costs on common procedures in their area, as well as view doctor ratings based on patient reviews. The site was conceived after Erich Graham, 27, injured himself playing hockey a few years ago. He realized that he was going to need an MRI, and because he had a high-deductible plan, he knew it was probably going to be expensive. Graham tried shopping around for the best price in his area, and found it almost impossible to learn the real costs before the imaging was performed. “It’s like looking at apartments, checking out the amenities, meeting the landlord, signing the lease, and then finding out what the rent is,” he told Fast Company.
MORE: Why House Calls Are Health Care’s Future, Not Just Its Past
Graham knew there had to be a better way, so he teamed up with a fellow graduate from Cornell Tech, Greg Tobkin, 28, and together they came up with an idea to allow consumers to crowdsource their doctor bills, in order to inform other users of their medical experiences — and most importantly, the costs of procedures and checkups. The pair is currently seeking funding and advisers to help them navigate the tricky world of health care pricing. But while there are some barriers to overcome before launch, Graham and Tobkin know that, given the success of sites like ZocDoc and Yelp, which already offer patient reviews, the ability to compare health care costs is a service that could be incredibly helpful. “This will definitely exist in five years, whether it’s us or someone else who does it,” Tobkin says. “There’s too big a need.”
Clarification: Doctible was the working title of Graham and Tobkin’s Cornell Tech project. Their idea is not related to the startup Doctible, a website that allows consumers to negotiate prices on medical bills. Graham and Tobkin are seeking a new name for their venture, and are in talks with startup accelerators to get their idea off the ground.