Image by extranoise via FlickrPhysician house calls of the past provided a highly personalized interaction between doctor and patient that allowed for empathic communication and connection and thorough medical care. Many office-based physicians offered house call services to patients of all ages, and at all hours, for convenience. Physicians found that seeing patients at home made sense.
An ill person should not always be required to get out of bed, travel to their doctor, perhaps wait for long periods in the waiting room or exam room before finally receiving care, and then traveling home, stopping off at the pharmacy along the way. With the advent of technology, such as xray imaging, the large immobile machines drew patients to offices, clinics and hospitals to receive evaluation enhanced by this technology. The traditional home visit from the doctor became nearly obsolete in the USA, until 1998, when Medicare increased reimbursement for house call services for beneficiaries.
Because of concurrent advances in mobile medical technology house calls have since seen a rise in popularity, however mostly for patients over the age of 65. While the traditional family physician house call remains somewhat rare, a new house call option has emerged. A number of mobile medical practices have been established that cater to healthy patients of all ages. Many of these services started with a focus on traveler urgent care. However with time, more and more, these medical practices have found that non-travelers too value the convenience that these services offer.
While many of these practices tend to be staffed by either
family physicians or other generalists, the services of a few practices, such as
Urgent Med Housecalls based in San Francisco, California focus on offering mobile urgent care by board certified emergency physicians and their assistants. The philosophy is that mobile care offered by emergency physicians tends to offer an exceptional standard of safety and competence because todays emergency physicians are highly trained and experienced in the care of seriously ill and injured patients and because emergency physicians prefer to always be prepared for the worst.
By offering the services of emergency physicians, Urgent Med Housecalls believes that it's mobile services may be among the safest for patients. Additionally, emergency physicians are highly adept at performing procedures because of the busy nature of most emergency medicine practices. It makes sense that ER doctors have the most potential to help their patients avoid the ER safely.
Finally, emergency physicians are used to evaluating and treating patients of all ages, including pediatrics. By providing emergency physician house call services, Urgent Med Housecalls now offers patients versatile, efficient, competent and safe
mobile medical services.
Image by Let Ideas Compete via FlickrThere are many reasons why you would have to stop by an immediate medical care center. A number of people think an urgent care is simply for injuries or accidents. Certainly urgent care medical center is the place to come for that, but this sort of center also treat all types of health conditions that a primary medical doctor would see a patient for.
