House Call MD

A house call MD, or Physician house call, is an act of customer service where the doctors goes to the consumers home, rather than the consumer visiting the suppliers place of business. House calls are most often associated with doctor house calls. There are still doctors making house calls. A physician-led multidisciplinary team provides comprehensive, patient-centered care for any condition, from the simple problems to the very complex, in the patient’s own environment. Thanks to modern technology and our sophisticated, multi-faceted delivery system, we can do more tests and procedures in our patient’s home or place of business than other primary care physicians do in their office. House call MDs are equipped to perform most procedures normally performed in a medical office. House call doctors utilize electronic medical records and will coordinate home health and hospice services, mobile imaging services, durable medical equipment services, laboratory services, and specialist referral services. House call doctors acts as the primary care physician or as augmentation to or as an interim physician to the patients’ present medial team. Doctor’s House calls provide post hospital stabilization service to physicians, insurance plans, and hospitals to mitigate hospital re-admissions. Some concierge practices do not accept insurance of any kind. These are as cash-only or direct primary care practices. By refusing to deal with insurance companies, these practices can keep overhead and administrative costs low, thereby providing affordable healthcare to patients. They become concierge only if the practice assesses an annual or monthly fee instead of or in addition to a fee for each medical service. Other concierge practices do take insurance, even Medicare, but ask for an annual fee for additional services exclusive of insurance plans. This annual fee is not a substitute for medical insurance, and generally does not cover consultations outside the practice, laboratory procedures, medicines, hospitalizations, or emergency care from other providers.

Direct Primary Care

Direct primary care is primary care offered direct to the consumer, without insurance intervention. It incorporates various health care delivery systems that involve direct financial relationships between patients and health care providers. One niche variant of direct primary care is concierge medicine. Direct primary care can remove many of the financial barriers to accessing care when needed. Often, there are no insurance co-pays, deductibles or co-insurance fees thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers. Under this model, patients may pay a combination of visit fees and/or fixed monthly fees, which grant them access to a set of medical services, including same and next-day appointments, both in the form of house calls and office visits. A direct primary care arrangement benefits from pairing with either: a high-deductible health plan, as direct primary care alone will not cover catastrophic health care such as most surgeries, a health savings account, or health reimbursement account as the associated tax-benefits can generally be applied to direct primary care and other medical expenses. Direct primary care practices do not typically accept insurance payments, thus avoiding the overhead and complexity of maintaining relationships with insurers, which can consume as much as $0.40 of each medical dollar spent. Direct primary care payments are over time, rather than in return for specific services, the economic incentives are such that the long-term health of the patient is the most lucrative situation for the doctor. Preventative care gains greater emphasis under direct primary care. Because the primary care physician compensation is better than it would be under insurance billing, doctors can afford to spend more time with the patient, rather than simply referring them to a highly paid specialist after a short consultation. Boutique medicine is a type of medical practice now found in many metropolitan areas across the country. Also known as, concierge health care, concierge medicine, or retainer medicine, the concept has come to represent a higher level of healthcare for those who want a more personalized relationship with their physician. This model has proven successful for those physicians who want to see a fewer number of patients on a day to day basis, thus allowing them to spend more time nourishing individual patient relationships.

Skin Treatment

On a daily basis, toxins and environmental factors do damage to the skin on your face. It must withstand pollution, exposure to ultraviolet rays, wind and debris, as well as the harmful chemicals in most all skin care products and cosmetics. The skin on your face is the most delicate skin on your body. Dermatologists developed special products specifically for facial skin. It can be difficult to decipher which products perform which tasks, and which products would work the best with a particular skin type.

Gastric Band Revision

After gastric band surgery, patients may need gastric band revision surgery for a number of reasons. A laparoscopic adjustable gastric band, commonly referred to as a lap band, is an inflatable silicone device that a surgeon wraps around the top portion of the stomach, via laparoscopic surgery, in order to treat obesity. The lap band could slip down, leading to a slow chronic condition or an acute condition requiring emergency surgery. Both circumstances ultimately lead to the gastric band not functioning the way it should. While each circumstance is different, treating these issues may require removing the lap band, repositioning the lap band or replacing the lap band all together. Removing the lap band obviously opens the door for potential weight regain. Gastric band erosion is another possible complication of lap band surgery. Lap band erosion occurs when the lap band burns a hole in the stomach, rendering the lap band ineffective. Patients may vomit blood as the first signal of lap band erosion. The most frequent symptom of lap band erosion is an infection around the site of the port. Due to erosion caused by the lap band, saliva leaks through the hole in the stomach and flows along the lap band tubing, causing the tissue under the skin of the lap band port to become infected. Gastric band revision treatment requires removing the lap band, resulting in no further weight loss surgery and a high likelihood of weight regain. The lap band may simply fail to produce the desired results and require revision bariatric surgery. Lap band is a restrictive weight loss surgery and some patients may not have the metabolism needed to lose weight with the lap band. Other patients may not be able to eat in the new prescribed way to achieve success after lap band placement. Gastric banding is the least invasive surgery of the bariatric kind. A gastric band surgical procedure using laparoscopic methods results in a shorter hospital stay, faster recovery, smaller scars, and less pain than open surgical procedures. The patient can continue to absorb nutrients from food normally. Gastric bands are made entirely of biocompatible materials, so they are able to remain in the body without causing harm. However, not all patients are suitable for laparoscopy. Patients who are extremely obese, who have had previous abdominal surgery, or have complicating medical problems may require the open approach.