Given that our health care system has become a bloated carcass of once honorable intentions, I think a fundamental redesign of the examining room is in order. For beyond the doctor and patient, the physical room which contains their ebullient repartee is the next logical target for improvement. Here is one radical idea that may need only a few tweaks:
Food Truck Family Practice Idea: click to view larger
The foodtruckexaminingroom will roam from town to town across the United States, stopping in major cities and small towns with main streets in order to provide excellent medical consultations.
The charge will be $25 per “visit”, with home made food gifts strongly encouraged. A medical “plan for your local doctor with malpractice coverage” will be generated from each visit, and will be thoroughly excellent.
The nerve center of the truck, and the heart and soul of this new concept, will be a very casual exam room inside the truck. There will be two chairs, a table, optional wine glasses, and a plush 1970’s style shag rug. A Norman Rockwell will be on the wall, a subtle and ironic nod to the midcentury demise of the “real” family doctor. Perhaps a bring-one-take-one-used-book-shelf will invite the free flow of subversive leftist literature.
A wine rack will be on the wall, highlighting the virtues of moderation and zinfandel.
Please rest assured there will be music gently streaming in the background, ranging from such therapeutic artists as Chopin, James Brown, and The Alabama Shakes. A nice, toothless, fluffy (and occasionally smelly dog) named Babaganoush will smile and purr gracefully at each patient, inviting intimacy and reducing anxiety from the start. For an additional 50 cents, “Baba” will roll around on your back, simulating a low cost sort of medical massage.
The truck will strive to park under shady trees in warm weather, and to maintain an alternate, open-air exam “area” with folding chairs. This area will have little to no privacy and so will be an optional, flagrant violation of HIPPA standards. A discretionary campfire, with a “Saturday Sausage Sizzle” (TM – trademark, all rights reserved) will mesh seamlessly with America’s entrenched tail-gating and RV culture.
On the top of the foodtruckexaminingroom will be perhaps the most important engineering feats – a mobile greenhouse growing organic kale, herbs, tomatoes, and mint for mojitos and tea. It will be fertilized periodically with excrement from the 500 pound, fully operational chicken coop. Free range chickens will be let out during the day to wander around eating local bugs, and will produce about a dozen organic eggs per day, which will be given to the first 12 patients of each session.
A beehive will be maintained on the roof as well, with honeybees diligently avoiding Bayer’s neonicotinoid pesticides, and Monsanto’s GMO crops, to bring us delicious honey, always on tap directly from the hive.
The rear of the truck will be retrofitted with a freezer for chocolate ice cream, the exclusive and happily restrictive diet that will be recommended for all willing nonagenarians.
The exercise zone will be fairly minimalistic, purposefully demonstrating that one really needs to just move around. The tai chi manual must be returned before sunset.
I am currently seeking investors and start up venture capital for this concept. I believe it to be scalable, yet inherently resistant to the mind-numbing, evil tendencies of big corporate paradigms and six sigma cannibalism. This concept will be “intuitive” and “quite natural” for patients willing to step inside the food truck and get some healing. Please allow me to clarify any questions you may have, and I would happily entertain suggestions for improvement.
