Physicians making house calls may sound like fabled history—long before the era of electronic health records and complex payment models—but what if this is exactly how some physicians are transforming health care today?
David Loxterkamp, MD, a family physician in Belfast, Maine, has made house calls a key component of his practice, Seaport Community Health Center, one of four team-based practices featured in a new PBS documentary, Rx: The Quiet Revolution.
Created by 10-time Emmy Award winner David Grubin, the AMA-sponsored film showcases physicians and care teams across the nation who are changing how people receive medical care by lowering costs and making patients the central focus of their practices.
Dr. Loxterkamp, whose father was also a physician who made house calls to patients during lunch and evening hours, said this personal touch to medicine can empower patients to find real health solutions that fit their complicated lives.
“We’ve been trained exquisitely well in medical school to fix what can be fixed. When we know what the problem is and there’s a technical solution, boy, are we good—and we’re fast and a little expensive,” Dr. Loxterkamp said of physicians. Yet he notes that most chronic illnesses develop from patient habits and lifestyles that extend beyond charting diagnostics or prescribing medicine.
And that’s where the house calls, team-based care and partnering with patients to improve health outcomes can bolster solutions.
While some physicians may lack ample time for house calls or “negotiating” lifestyle changes with patients, Dr. Loxterkamp credits his practice’s team of physicians, nurses, medical assistants, a psychiatrist and a physical therapist for helping him manage beleaguering tasks, so he can forge more meaningful relationships with patients.
The results speak for themselves:
- One-third of patients in his smoking cessation program have quit smoking. The last reported national cessation rate was 6.2 percent, according to the CDC.
- Emergency room visits have dropped 40 percent in the last four years.
- Last year, the blood sugar level of patients with uncontrollable diabetes dropped 100 points.
Help your patients chart similar progress
Learn more about Dr. Loxterkamp’s practice and the future of medicine in Rx: The Quiet Revolution: Watch the full film online or check to see when it airs near you.
Even if you’re not able to make house calls for your patients, you still can help them make important changes to improve their health outcomes within their communities. The AMA’s Improving Health Outcomes initiative offers resources to aid physicians and their patients in getting high blood pressure under control and preventing the development of type 2 diabetes.
Learn about resources that can help patients manage their blood pressure outside office visits.
Check out a new toolkit recently released by the AMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the Prevent Diabetes STAT: Screen, Test, Act – Today™ initiative. The toolkit helps physicians and their care teams integrate into their practice work flows screening and testing patients for prediabetes as well as referring them to evidence-based diabetes prevention programs.
