Health care management system

A method of managing a health care request for a patient, the health care request having a first criteria that is a medical symptom for the patient, the health care request being made to an intermediary between a source of the health care request and the plurality of medical providers, the intermediary not being a person treating the patient and the intermediary having access to a processor that is coupled to a database system, and

• the method comprising the steps practiced in the intermediary of:
• receiving the health care request from a source thereof in a patient interface provided by the processor;
• selecting a subset of medical providers having expertise in treating the medical symptom from a plurality of medical providers;
• augmenting, by a medically trained individual, the health care request with medical information associated with the medical symptom, the medical information being medically relevant to dealing with the medical symptom and being located by the medically trained individual in the database system using an augmentation interface provided by the processor;
• providing the health care request to the subset of medical providers using a provider interface provided by the processor;
• receiving a treatment proposal for the medical symptom from at least one of the medical providers via the provider interface;
• providing a comparative report of the treatment proposals to each medical provider via the provider interface;
• receiving a final treatment proposal from each medical provider via the provider interface;
• providing each final treatment proposal to the source via the patient interface;
• and
• receiving a selection of one of the final treatment proposals associated with at least one of the medical providers from the source via the patient interface.

A health care management system comprising:

• a patient-client interface for receiving a health care request for a patient having a medical symptom;
• a provider-client interface for receiving a treatment proposal for the patient from a medical provider having expertise in treating the medical symptom;
• an augmentation interface for receiving an augmentation to the healthcare request from a medically trained individual and
• a server in communication with the provider-client interface for receiving the treatment proposal and in communication with the patient-client interface for receiving the health care request for the patient, the server receiving the augmentation from the augmentation interface, communicating the augmentation and the health care request to the provider-client interface, communicating the treatment proposal to the patient-client interface, and receiving a selection of a treatment proposal from the patient-client interface.

A method of responding to a health care request for a patient that describes a medical symptom, the health care request being made to an intermediary between a source of the health care request and a set of one or more medical providers, the intermediary not being a person treating the patient and the intermediary having access to a processor that is coupled to a database system, and

• the method comprising the steps performed in the intermediary of:
• receiving the health care request from the source thereof in a patient interface provided by the processor;
• augmenting the health care request with information that is obtained by a medically trained person, is medically relevant to dealing with the medical symptom, and is located by the medically trained individual in the database system using an augmentation interface provided by the processor;
• and
• providing the augmented health care request to a subset of the medical providers selected by the medically trained person using a provider interface provided by the processor.