House Calls Anyone?

I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother was ill for several years. She suffered several strokes and she didn’t get out much. We came to her house and I stayed with her a lot of weekends. She was an amazing person, but when she wasn’t feeling well, she had to take it easy so that her blood pressure stayed below stroke level. When she was feeling well, we had adventure after adventure and they were wonderful.

One of the hardest things for me to get through was the visits by her doctor. It helped her a lot because he could keep track of how well she was doing without her having to go through the energy and difficulty to get dressed up (my Grandma was a total lady – unless we were going to the ittle store around the block, she was wearing a dress, nylons, her nice purse, makeup and a hat). Having the doctor come to see her made her life easier and probably made it last longer.

Fast forward a decade and house calls started to disappear. There are many reasons, however, one of the biggest for the disappearance of house calls has been the increase in expense of medical care. If a doctor can book 3 to 4 patients per hour at his or her office, even for 6 hours per day brings in a lot of money and a ot of patients. Cutting out time to go to the home of the patient the doctor is making a no longer cost effective. Figure an hour drive time round trip and at least 20 to 30 minutes (or more). So, making one house call is the equivalent of not seeing at least 6 patients in the doctor’s office without the doctor having to leave, drive, come back to the office and start over again.

One of the wonderful things that has happened very recently is a resurgence of house calls by nurses, doctors, therapists and others who are working to try to go to the homes of their more frail, elderly or shut in patients. Partially due to Medicare and Medicaid, they are able to check the patient to see how they are doing, if they are feeling OK and if they have enough food and other necessities. Because of the portability of instruments such as computers, EKG’s, ultrasound and more.

So, though it might net the doctors and other health care providers a bit less money, it will increase the quality of life for the patients served and the doctors will most likely feel much more enriched about the human part of their profession.