beeper medicine
n. The practice of medicine by responding primarily to pages and other emergency calls.
Examples
1999
With so many timesaving devices, where does all the time go?

In the era of the nanosecond, express lines in fast-food restaurants, speed dialing, beeper medicine and the remote control, the compression of labor meant to free our lives instead leaves us harried and overburdened.
—David Walton, “Timesaving devices have time-losing drawbacks,” The Dallas Morning News, August 29, 1999
1999 (earliest)
Other professions, other technological speed-ups: medicine has been profoundly altered by the simple pocket pager. . . . Some doctors worry about the rise of what they call 'beeper medicine'; they see an addiction to paging and quick fixes.
—James Gleick, Faster, Pantheon, August 17, 1999
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