You're sick, it's the middle of the night, and you can't wait until morning to go to the doctor. Do you gut it out or go to the emergency room?
Next time this happens, SOS Medlink is banking you'll pay to bring the doctor to you. The new house-call service was launched in December in West Los Angeles. Founder Veronique Mastey says the company plans to expand to the San Fernando Valley next.
"We're
in business when the doctors aren't," Mastey said. "Going to the
emergency room is a minimum four- to six-hour wait unless you
have a heart attack or a gunshot wound. Our service will allow
the ERs to handle the emergencies rather than the nonemergencies."
House calls in various forms have made a comeback in recent years. Some, like SOS Medlink, offer their services to the general public. Others target a particular niche, such as Medicare patients or travelers.
Doctors who work for house-call services say they're drawn by the promise of reduced daily case loads and the ability to practice a more personal brand of medicine. For consumers, the allure is time and convenience. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans made 108 million visits to the emergency room in 2000, a 14 percent increase over 1997. Patients with nonurgent medical needs waited 68 minutes to see the doctor in 2000, compared to 51 minutes in 1997.
"It's a return to how medicine used to be practiced before there was so much technology involved and before highways got so congested," said Paul Ginsburg, an economist and president of the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington, D.C. "There's a fertile field to pursue, offering people who can pay better services than have been available in the past."
Though insurance companies have billing codes for house calls, consumers would be wise to check with their health plans first, said Walter Zelman, president of California Association of Health Plans. The average consumer is better off going to an urgent care center that has agreements with most health insurance plans, he said.
"This is an upscale, limousine way of delivering health care," Zelman said. "Your insurance company may reimburse some or none of it."
At SOS Medlink, Dr. Louis Fishman, an internist, and Dr. Peter Waldstein, a pediatrician, serve as the clinical directors. Calls are answered by a registered nurse who assesses the symptoms and dispatches the physician. The service promises to have a doctor at the patient's door within the same day of a call to their Toll free number 1 866 SOS-MD4U.
A doctor's visit costs $60 admin fee with PPO Insurance and deductible met, excluding diagnostic costs or pharmacy services. Patients are expected to pay for the service and then submit the bill to their health insurance carrier.
"When I went into private practice, I was trained from the old school to do house calls, which I still do to this day," Waldstein said. "I thought (SOS Medlink) was a fabulous thing, especially with the county emergency rooms having problems."
For more information, visit http://www.sosmedlink.com/
