Is There a Doctor in the House?

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HotelDocs and HouseCalls USA
Another locally based outfit, HotelDocs, with offices in La Jolla, arranged house calls for ailing visitors staying at hotel rooms, locally and nationwide. Founded in 1988 by entrepreneur Ian Becker, HotelDocs had received lots of positive press in recent years. But then, seemingly overnight, the company, which billed itself as “the largest company in the house call field, with 2,500 doctors in all 50 states,” just disappeared. And patients reportedly were left in the lurch. None of the executives from HotelDocs could be reached for comment.

Picking up the slack for HotelDocs was a former rival, HouseCalls USA, a six-year-old company based in Miami, which purchased the La Jolla company’s name and 800 number. “They [HotelDocs] just stopped answering their phone one day,” says Harris Mones, a family doctor who comanages HouseCalls USA. “From what we understand, they literally just up and left in the middle of the night. They apparently had some financial issues; they weren’t paying their doctors. We now have about 30 doctors who make house calls for us in San Diego, some of whom were working for HotelDocs. But our doctors are all paid.”

Alex Torres, a family practice physician in San Diego with an office on Columbia Street, makes an average of three to four house calls a week here for HouseCalls USA. He worked for HotelDocs as well, which he regrets. “They still owe me $3,000,” he says, adding that HouseCalls USA pays him promptly. “I don’t know what happened to HotelDocs; they just disappeared. I went to their office one day and it was empty.”

Torres, a former clinical instructor in the department of family medicine at UCSD, also makes house calls for such national companies as MediHelp, Express Docs and Oncall Docs—mostly serving the Spanish-speaking tourist community here.

“This is old-fashioned medicine, the kind money can’t buy,” he says. “I believe there’s still room for a little of that nowadays. It’s a great service, especially for tourists who don’t have any idea where to go when they’re sick or injured. I’ll never get rich doing this, but it’s rewarding. And it’s getting more and more popular.”

Charges at HouseCalls USA average between $150 and $250.

AM/PM House Calls

Perhaps the most ambitious of all house-call entrepreneurs interviewed for this story is Ramsey Saffouri, founder of AM/PM House Calls in Hollywood, Florida. Although it sounds like a convenience store chain, AM/PM has doctors making house calls in San Diego and 25 other U.S. cities, says Saffouri, whose company offers a so-called “VIP” service—that is, house calls. “We now have more than 5,800 generalists and specialists,’ he says.

The company is reached through a toll-free number: 888-AMPMDOC. Then, a local doctor is dispatched to a patient’s door in less than 60 minutes, says Saffouri, himself a physician. He says he founded AM/PM because he, too, was “outraged” by the state of healthcare in America.

Catering to the moneyed crowd, AM/PM doctor visits to home, office or hotel room start at $300—plus the cost of medicine or therapy, which could run many hundreds and even thousands more. And like most house-call outfits, the AM/PM folks do not accept insurance—although Saffouri notes that most major American health insurance companies are willing to reimburse patients for these home visits because they are typically cheaper than emergency room services. “About 96 percent of our patients, when submitting their bills to insurance companies, are reimbursed,” he says, “depending on what kind of policy they have.”

Saffouri, a bit of a salesman who’s clearly enamored of wealth and celebrity, is proud to tell you that the first house call he ever made was to Frank Sinatra in Florida. “Frank yelled at me, I yelled at him, and we became fast friends,” he says with a laugh. “We’re both from New Jersey; there was an immediate bond there.”

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