I am a UK-trained physician with board certification in IM. I've got about 4 years of practice under my belt.
I was getting pretty restless in my job (doctors in the UK have it tough...) so I started looking around for other opportunities and ended up with a generous scholarship to do an MPH in the US. So, I'm here doing the grad student thing for a while.
I've entered into an entrepreneurial competition with an idea for a smartphone-based app which allows doctors to look at available shifts within their hospital. The app would make it easier to pick up moonlight shifts, expand the number of regular "internal" (hospital staff) moonlighters and therefore reduce the need to hire temporary "external" (agency staff) through expensive third parties. To emphasize, this is for "internal" members of staff and it is not a comprehensive recruitment app for locum opportunities.
This idea is totally based on my experience as a doctor in the UK, and the many, many, many problems of the NHS and doctor shift management.
General question:
Does anyone have any useful information on the US hospital system to help me translate the idea?
Specific questions:
I've been selected for the final of the competition but I want to make the idea as realistic as possible.
I was getting pretty restless in my job (doctors in the UK have it tough...) so I started looking around for other opportunities and ended up with a generous scholarship to do an MPH in the US. So, I'm here doing the grad student thing for a while.
I've entered into an entrepreneurial competition with an idea for a smartphone-based app which allows doctors to look at available shifts within their hospital. The app would make it easier to pick up moonlight shifts, expand the number of regular "internal" (hospital staff) moonlighters and therefore reduce the need to hire temporary "external" (agency staff) through expensive third parties. To emphasize, this is for "internal" members of staff and it is not a comprehensive recruitment app for locum opportunities.
This idea is totally based on my experience as a doctor in the UK, and the many, many, many problems of the NHS and doctor shift management.
General question:
Does anyone have any useful information on the US hospital system to help me translate the idea?
Specific questions:
- Do US hospitals suffer from the problem of over-using temporary external staff?
- Do you think an app could work for moonlighting?
- What might be the biggest problem you can foresee for such an app?
I've been selected for the final of the competition but I want to make the idea as realistic as possible.
