Healthcare: Blast from the Past-Medical Care in Your Home -

Blast from the Past-Medical Care in Your Home

Healthcare:

If your memory can stretch back 50 years or so you might remember seeing a well dressed man carrying a black bag approach your or your neighbor's front door. No, it wasn't an IRS auditor or an insurance salesman, or even someone running for city council. It was the doctor.

Back in those days physicians would often visit patient's homes to render care. Most everyone thought it was good idea, but this convenience seemed to vanish as doctors became increasingly inundated with patients during the baby boom.

Our house calls story would end abruptly right here, were it not for Family Home Care and Hospice. (FHCH) of Spokane, WA. FHCH is a home health agency serving patients in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. FHCH has recently begun offering primary care medical services in a patient's home. The new service, appropriately named, "House Calls" provides a variety of primary care medical services including, routine check-ups, blood draws, medication monitoring, diagnosing medical conditions and prescribing medications. Following an initial visit and diagnosis, patients may also receive their on-going treatment and follow-up from their House Calls provider, or their in-home care can be coordinated with their regular physician.

Medical professionals staffing the House Calls program are Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners (ARNP). They have additional training and are specially licensed for providing medical services in the patient's home. These skilled professionals would rather see a patient in a home environment instead of at a clinic or a hospital.

"It gives us an opportunity to spend much more time with each patient," explained Carol Charles, ARNP. "We get to know them on a much more personal level and can observe the environment in which they live. Many times those observations give us a greater advantage in prescribing effective treatments than if we were seeing the patient in a clinic."

House Calls is a perfect service for the home-bound or people for whom the task of getting to the doctor's office is just too daunting. But, House Calls is not limited to people who are immobile. The service can be used by anyone who prefers their primary care medical services to be delivered at home.

"The majority of our patients are elderly." explained Alicia Bowman, FHCH's coordinator for primary care services. "They certainly have the need, but there are also quite a number of younger patients. This is not a service only for the elderly."

In many communities throughout the nation, services which will deliver primary medical care in the home are non-existent. Without a House Calls style service, many people in the community will postpone medical care until their condition deteriorates enough to require emergency treatment. Even under the best conditions, some bed ridden or immobile patients postpone their care long enough that their problems have become significantly more serious. Having a service like House Calls available in a community is critical to the health of these people.

While the demand for this service in the Spokane area is strong, the rapid growth of the elderly population in the US means that, services like Family Home Care's House Calls will likely be needed in many areas of the country.

"Home health agencies already have the expertise and systems to offer these services in their areas," explained Michael Nowling, FHCH President. "If enough home health agencies take on this service all across the country, it will represent a significant benefit to our elderly patients and will take some of the pressure off of our emergency rooms and staff."

For more than 40 years Family Home Care and Hospice has been serving patients in the Inland Northwest. Recently they were recognized by Medicare as being among the top one percent of home health agencies in the State of Washington and among the top five percent of home health agencies in the country.

Michael Nowling is the President of FHCH, a home health agency in the the area area, WA. The largest privately owned home health agency in the the area area, FHCH has been serving the inland Northwest for more than 40 years.