Developing countries such as those in Africa serve as a showcase of how ‘cost-effective medical practices deployed in poor nations deliver good results.’ The strategies hope to be replicated in rich countries such as the US. One example is
“Project Connect,” a program used in AIDS clinics in Zambia, now being exercised in Alabama.

‘In the Alabama program, patients were given appointments with doctors within five days of calling the clinic. Blood tests were taken during the first visit. A social worker did an interview, trying to identify and address any issues that might prevent patients from coming back. The no-show rate dropped from 31% in 2007 to 18% through June 2009.’

According to Michael Saag, a renowned AIDS doctor and founding director of the Alabama clinic, “We recognized that we had a problem and that Zambia had already come up with an affordable solution that could work here.”

There is a variety of obstacles to expedited medical care in the developed world. One is the bureaucratic procedure where there are ‘complexities of insurance reimbursement to regulations designed to protect patients.’ Another obstacle is cultural because ‘there is a deep-seated reluctance to accept that simpler and less expensive treatments like those used abroad might be good enough.’ These are also some of the reasons ‘why solutions deployed in developing countries are getting more attention.’

Says Mark Dybul, former US Global AIDS Coordinator under President George W. Bush, “We learned from Africa that in a very resource-limited setting, you can do very effective chronic care delivery that doesn’t have to be overmedicalized. These are models we can learn a lot from.”

One doctor observed, “In the developing world, people are willing to make the tradeoff in accuracy for simplicity and low cost. In the U.S., that kind of trade-off is a hard sell.”

Via The Wall Street Journal