Doctor House Calls

ALL of Our services are provided at your home for optimal comfort and ease. We specialize in providing in home, one on one, medical care in the comfort of your home or office. Sometimes it’s not easy, practical or even possible to get to a physician’s office. However, this should not prevent you from getting the health care and treatment you need and deserve. Once the norm in medical care, the frequency of doctors making house calls – i.e., in-person visits to the patient’s residence by a doctor – declined sharply in the early to mid-1900s. Patients of all ages and levels of disability, income, and mobility began to have to travel to private medical offices and hospitals for all of their healthcare services, because doctors were no longer making house calls. However, patient demand for a return to the way things used to be has grown in recent years. The pandemic has also created a necessity for in-home patient visits by house call doctors, as telehealth visits are not always sufficient – and many doctors are now visiting patients in their homes. Traveling to your doctor can put you at risk. The Country Doc Shop specializes in primary care services, Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, Neuromusculoskeletal, Holistic Medicine and geriatric care management. We also take sick calls, treat minor injuries and much more! You do not have to change your primary care doctor to see us. We can be your ongoing primary care provider, or we can work with your existing physician. We are a fee for service medical business. We will provide you with an invoice for you to seek reimbursement from your insurance company. We cannot promise that your insurance company will give you any reimbursement. Many barriers to primary healthcare accessibility in the United States exist including an increased opportunity cost associated with seeking primary care. New models of healthcare delivery aimed at addressing these problems are emerging. The potential impact that on-demand primary care physician house calls services can have on healthcare accessibility, patient care, and satisfaction by both patients and physicians is poorly characterized. The Return of House Calls The fastest growing segment of the American population is adults over the age of 85 and the number of people aged 65 or older is projected to double over the next 15 years. Not only is the elderly population increasing steadily, they are spending more and more time in the hospital for treatment of chronic diseases like stroke, heart disease, and cancer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), two out of three older Americans have more than one chronic condition and treatment for these conditions accounts for nearly two-thirds of the country's healthcare spending. Not only is it expensive to treat chronic conditions in the elderly, the current hospital-focused method is inefficient. Now, doctors are beginning to rediscover that in- home health care and treatment for the elderly can reduce hospitalizations and improve the management of chronic diseases. What Do Medical Home Visits Look Like? One of the primary advantages of home health care is that it can be customized according to the patient’s needs. Medical home visits can be used to provide everything from preventive medicine to management of complex chronic conditions, and it can be executed by a wide range of medical professionals, including primary care physicians, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and more. Medical house calls can provide a wide range of services, including the following: • Primary care • Routine follow-ups • Specialist consultations • Skilled nursing care • Physical therapy • Occupational therapy • Speech therapy • Palliative care • Dementia care • Medication management • Transitional care • Diabetic counseling • Health and nutrition counseling • Wound care In-home doctor visits can be customized according to the patient’s need and may include any combination of the services listed above. By providing in-home health care, house call doctors are able to provide better continuity of care for patients who might not otherwise have access to regular or reliable healthcare services. The Benefits of In-Home Medical Care for the Elderly The main benefit of in-home medical care for the elderly is that it helps keep patients out of hospitals, emergency rooms, and nursing homes. According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), more than one million older Americans are completely homebound and another 2-3 million are sufficiently disabled that they cannot go to the doctor's office. Even elderly adults who are not completely homebound are likely to put off visiting their primary care doctor because it is simply too much of an ordeal. As a result, their conditions worsen and treatment becomes more expensive. In addition to reducing the frequency of hospitalizations and ER visits, in-home care is more personalized than the care most patients receive in a doctor's office or hospital. Many physicians see 20 or more patients per day and each visit is very brief. By bringing care directly to the patient, it becomes far more personalized; treatment is customized to each patient's individual medical needs. It can also give both patients and their loved ones peace of mind knowing they are being cared for in the comfort of their own home.