Community Chat

[Trinity11]

Our family doctor made house calls when I grew up in the 60's. 

Today if you want the same service, you need concierge medicine. You pay a fee yearly and a physician will come to the house if it is in your contract.

[RoughDraft]

I'm from the era of house calls.  Our doctor showed up on night after 10 p.m. and we weren't his last on the list!

Never hears of specialists back then, although I'm sure they existed.

Today, walking into a hospital or doctor's office one is met by people in scrubs.  Can't tell if they're doctors, nurses, physician assistants, cafeteria workers or cleaning staff!

[bonnielu]

House calls when I was a child.  As the years progressed the doctors still were easy to reach as were the appointments for in office visits.

Now, my doctors sit and take notes literally at the computer. I probably could substitute  my Chihuahua and he would not know the differenct. 

[sunshine45]

dont remember doctors making housecalls at all.

dont remember nurses in the doctors offices.....it was always just secretaries or office managers.

dont remember doctors dispensing medicine directly either.

[shoesnbags]

When I was growing up in the 1950s, my pediatrician didn't just make house calls, he would open up his office in the middle of the night if necessary.  This was in the city and his office was near a large hospital.

I had asthma as a child and would wake up sometimes at night wheezing and unable to breathe.  I can still remember that horrible feeling of not being able to get enough air!

My mom would call the doctor and he'd say to meet him at his office.  After a drive across town, we'd arrive and he would put an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, which was instant relief.  I'd get a shot and cortisone pills to take, then we'd be on our way home.  No hospital ER to deal with like today.  I loved my doctor and eventually outgrew the asthma. 

[Enufstuff]

  When I was a child, my pediatrician made housecalls. My mother would always try to pay him, but he would refuse it.

He would say, "Don't worry about that now."

   When my girls were born in the 60's he was still making house calls for the babies' 6 weeks checkup.

   As I had more children, he would only charge for one office visit, no matter whether I brought in one child or all four.

[skatting44]

@Sage04 

yes, patient appointments have set time allowances  based on the scale of complexity .

 Most Doctor appointments are q 15 min intervals . Here is a research study published in Mar 2022. As a Registered Nurse who has worked in a primary care office  after a long  career in  MICU/SICU , I found often there was not enough time  allowed for many patients with multiple chronic illnesses . Patients  needed  additional office visits .

https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-022-01644-8

"This study aimed to assess for potential inferiority of shorter (15-min) primary care appointments compare to longer (≥ 30-min appointments) with respect to downstream healthcare utilization within 7 days of the initial appointment. "

" While shorter appointment lengths do allow more patients to be seen in a given day, allocating valuable clinician time in standardized, brief increments may not effectively meet patient needs, resulting in incomplete or incorrect diagnostic evaluations, poor patient experience, and potentially avoidable downstream healthcare utilization "

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-019-05624-0

[jubilant]

Remember when a doctor would have you lie flat on a table and actually feel organs?  My family Dr. always did that if you had pain anywhere in your midsection.  

Guess what...one day (I was only 21) he did just that.  Right away he did a pelvic after checking out my inners exam. He told me I would have to see a surgeon...that I had a large cyst on both ovaries (one the size of a woman's fist and the other the size of a golf ball)! I was shocked and said, "how do you know"....he said..."because I can feel the da#n things"!  He was right. I did have Dermoid cysts and they had to come out.

[Cakers3]

We also had a family doctor who made house calls.

I remember he came in with his black doctor bag and I remember one time he left that gad-awful liquid pink penicillin in the dark brown bottle.  Yuck.

I don't know if he had an office in his home but I assume he did since there were quite a few doctors back then who did; house calls were like doing "rounds" in hospitals back then.