Is There a Doctor in the House?

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Finding itself, as it often does, on the cutting edge of this movement, San Diego has a number of companies offering the service—some locally based, others not. But let the patient beware. As a booming niche industry, the house-call sector—while attracting some legit companies and doctors—enchants its share of zealous healthcare entrepreneurs and doctors who may not have the experience or the people skills, let alone the medical prowess, of Marcus Welby, M.D.

1-800-CALL-DOC
One of the first in the nation to reintroduce the concept of house calls is San Diego–based 1-800-CALL-DOC. The company was founded by C. Gresham Bayne, a local physician and pioneer in the house-call industry, who once ran the ER at Balboa Naval Hospital. Call Doc was Bayne’s answer to the increasing amount of time patients were spending in waiting rooms, the diminishing compassion of healthcare providers and soaring costs.

For about $200, a board-certified physician from Call Doc will visit a patient at home and bring along equipment that allows him or her to take and develop X-rays, perform and read blood tests, measure the cardiac output of a patient, suture wounds and much more. Call Doc claims its $200 house call could replace 80 percent of the 100 million annual U.S. emergency room visits (which cost an average of $1,500). In addition, the company also markets its services to homebound elderly patients who find it difficult or impossible to get to a doctor’s office.

But Call Doc has had its troubles lately. Once boasting 15 local doctors, the company says that number has been reduced to five. Several executives, including former CEO Hank Fanelli, who was hired to help the company grow nationally, have left, apparently for greener pastures.

“We’ve downsized a bit,” says Gresham Bayne Jr., the founder’s son, who recently graduated from Harvard and is now helping his dad run the struggling service. “Several of our doctors made the decision that they simply did not want to make house calls, for various reasons. But we’re still in business; we’re never going away.”

The younger Bayne says the healthcare establishment has made it difficult for Call Doc to survive. “We’re the company most responsible for getting Medicare to start paying for house calls in this country,” he says. “But it’s a struggle getting them to pay us. When we bill for $50,000, for example, we usually only get around $35,000. And if we didn’t constantly appeal to Medicare for payment, we’d probably only get about $10,000.

“The fact of the matter is a lot of people in the healthcare industry don’t like the idea. It takes jobs away from doctors.” But, Bayne says, “People in San Diego want house calls. We have thousands of letters thanking us for doing what we’re doing.”

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