Pager adds chats with nurses

Pager app

Pager is looking to tweak its business model by including nurses to the mix, TechCrunch is reporting. In the new setting, everything gets managed through an interface where users chat with Pager’s on-staff nurses, who are there to get a sense of each user’s needs. From there, they can identify the medical provider and an appropriate level of service, whether it’s a telemedicine session with a doctor, a house call or a visit to the hospital.

As part of the plan, the company is temporarily shutting down its San Francisco office so it can focus on refining the model in New York.

According to Walter Jin, founding partner at healthcare firm Three Fields Capital and a recent chairman of Pager’s board, by matching patients with the appropriate level of healthcare – this model can potentially address “the cost inefficiency that exists in the healthcare system today.”

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Oscar Salazar added that Pager decided to focus on chat, because that’s already the way most users connect with Pager’s medical providers.

“What we notice is for urgent care, people don’t necessarily stop their lives to get care,” Salazar said. “They do it when they find time in the middle of their busy day” – and chat, of course, is a great format for that.

The standard pricing for Pager includes free chats, $25 for a tele-consultation and $200 for an in-person visit.

Last year, the company has raised $14 million in Series A round of funding from New Enterprise Associates and Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures.