The Wall Street Journal posted this article last month showing how medical house calls can cut overall medical costs.
For many chronically ill older patients, house calls are replacing some hospital stays.
Across the U.S., home-based primary-care practices are sending doctors, nurses and other clinicians on regular house calls to older, infirm patients. The goal is to prevent costly hospital stays and admissions to long-term-care facilities, while improving the quality of care, especially for the sickest 5% of Medicare beneficiaries, who account for 50% of the federal program’s costs.
Unlike traditional visiting-nurse services, which step in for a few weeks after a patient is discharged from the hospital, the home-based primary-care model calls for continuing appointments. The patients, often frail and homebound, typically are struggling to manage multiple serious illnesses, such as dementia, congestive heart failure, stroke and cancer.
Read the entire article here.
