Home service makes treatment easier

NAIROBI, KENYA: An old idea is making a comeback. To increase access to high-quality healthcare, especially for patients in resource-constrained settings, house calls are becoming common.

How good it would be if your doctor could come home to you rather than you wading through traffic and waiting endlessly at the clinic.

It is cruel to subject an elderly patient to pothole-ridden roads, traffic, and parking problems, and then have him or her endure a two-hour wait for a 10-minute consultation. Imagine having 15 sessions of physiotherapy lined up; you end up waiting 45 minutes for a half-hour session.

These inconveniences can be avoided by delivering the medical service to homes.

There are four segments that the home service could cater for. The first is elderly patients, who are not actually sick but need regular care, monthly check-ups, medicine, and for whom keeping stable health is a goal.

The second is those with chronic diseases that may range from cardiac to cancer and kidney to multi-pronged problems. The third segment is those people who need post-operative care — such as dressings, injections and physiotherapy.

And the last segment involves primary care, where someone who is sick needs the attention of a general practitioner but is not able to leave the house.

A house call is one way of ensuring that a continuum of treatment is maintained so both the hospital and doctor are happy.

In telemedicine, doctors are tossing aside their stethoscopes and sitting down in front of computer screens or simply picking up phones in the expanding practice of remote medicine.

It is bringing healthcare from clinics and emergency rooms to your house.

Telemedicine provides 'virtual house calls' with telephone and video appointments to consult patients suffering from common illnesses.

For example, on a Sunday afternoon your child suddenly shows symptoms of pink eye. What do you do? Do you try to find an open medical clinic? Go to the emergency room?

All are options, and so too is heading straight for your computer, logging into your account and setting up a telephone or video appointment with a board-certified physician. These are three easy steps to medical care.

Telemedicine is not meant to replace the primary care physician, urgent care provider or ER. Telemedicine should be used as the first line of defence for the diagnosis and treatment of the most common conditions. Addressing these common illnesses has, until now, cost consumers a tremendous amount of time and money.

Proponents of home-care programmes say the approach keeps medical costs down by helping patients with multiple illnesses or simple ailments avoid hospitals and emergency rooms. It also saves time and the stress of burning fuel in traffic jams.