1. I needed a physical so I made an appointment via my doctor’s phone app. I don’t actually have a regular physician, I belong to a “primary care team”, a sort of service for which I pay about a hundred bucks a year. I’ve never seen the same doctor twice, which is honestly fine with me as I’ve never had much of a relationship with any doctor. On my team, the physicians seem to rotate in and out somewhat regularly and I’m now of the age where I’m as likely to be older than my doctor than not.

These “technology-enabled primary care” services are aimed squarely at my demo (ok, fine, a little younger than me) — urban dwellers who’d rather use an app than talk to a human for our occasional and largely predictable healthcare needs.

There are a few offices in most major U.S. metros, scattered conveniently across the downtowns where we tend to work. They feel very intentionally, very self-awarely, un-doctors-office as soon as you walk in. The waiting room could have been lifted from a CB2 catalog circa 2012, the music is almost always dangerously close to the soundtrack I would’ve made for a girl when I was single. There are hip and current magazines on the molded plastic side tables, as well as nostalgia primed-copies of Calvin & Hobbes anthologies, all of which are ignored by everyone on their phone.

I like my “team”, everyone is warm and personable. There is no Dr. So-and-So, it’s always first-name only, no white coats, and this time my doc insisted on a pound when I offered a handshake.

This visit I noticed that the sturdiness, if I can call it that, that I usually associate with a doctor’s office was completely missing. The thermometer that took my temperature was the same $20 thermometer I bought off Amazon. The light to check my pupils was a pen light. The digital scale would fit into any contemporary bathroom (my scale at home has wifi). There were window washers two feet away from me, like we were in any other office building. Which, of course, we were.

I didn’t realize I’d need lab work and they were cheerfully accommodating. The tech who drew my blood was incredibly sweet and tattooed and appropriately pierced for San Francsico. I had to go back a few days later to have my TB test read and the tech remembered me and was genuinely interested in our previous conversation. I’m certain I won’t see her next time I need lab work and a bit sad about that.

My wife, always more astute than I am, helped me pinpoint the still-small sense of unease I have about the whole affair: “It’s Virgin America”. That’s exactly it, of course. A lifestyle brand, a bit of gloss, an “experience”.

2. A friend was recommending a dentist that sounded straight out of contemporary William Gibson: the “office” is a black trailer that parks around town at regularly scheduled locations, much like a food truck. When you arrive, you’re greeted by a virtual assistant located somewhere else who signs you in via iPad. The dentist (and cofounder!) takes you back to what my friend described as “a well-lit nightclub”, where X-Rays are quickly taken via a “ray gun, no joke” and displayed on the ceiling-mounted television. You then pick something to watch on Netflix, strap on some headphone, and the dentist (and cofounder!) cleans your teeth ( “no space for a hygienist”).

The whole thing apparently takes a relatively painless 30 minutes in a side-street literally across from her office. If it’s possible to bootstrap a medical practice, this sounds like it.

3. My son needed a non-emergency but still urgent trip to a doctor this week (everything is fine) and we found ourselves in pretty much exactly what you think of when you think of an after-hours pediatrician. The building was a medical park stacked in a quasi-urban setting.

Just getting the appointment required several rounds of phone calls, talking to the on-call nurse, getting hung up on as the front office was trying to call me at the same time, losing that call, then calling back to talk to someone completely different. I couldn’t actually book the after-hours appointment until after 5:00 because it was a different office and different computer system. When I called at 5:04, the person I talked to was quite nice and had received the fax detailing my earlier conversation with the previous nurse so that was nice.

The physician’s assistant was warm and caring and took us back to the sort of very standard room everyone is familiar with. Padded reclining bed with the sterile paper, cabinets full of every first aid supply, glass jars of tongue depressors. The equipment cost thousands of dollars and is probably 30 years old and will certainly last decades more. My son pulled the magnifying light the doctor uses to check your pupils off the wall and as I tried to get it back on, I admired the heft and quality of it. The only technology updates I could see were the digital scale (still an impressively hefty and industrial piece of equipment) and the Dell plastered with cheatsheets for billing codes, running a decade-old version of Windows. This room was timeless because it was built to last forever and harkens to an age when the future hadn’t yet arrived.

My son’s doctor, and we referred to him as doctor, arrived in a white coat and carried an honest-to-god stethoscope. He was about my age and very gentle with our son with a kind smile, exactly who you’d hope for when you find yourself at the pediatrician unexpectedly on a Tuesday night.

As we left through a back door, I couldn’t help but laugh at the glassed in waiting room across the hall, it would have fit right in at any startup in town. It was a branch of my very own “technology-enabled primary care service”.