After Hour Clinic
An alternative to the after hour clinic that is becoming increasingly available is that of the doctor house call. Most Americans assume that their only option for when they are ill or injured after hours is to go to an after hour clinic or to the emergency room. While the ER is appropriate for serious or life-threatening cases, the waiting time to be evaluated and treated can be long and unpredictable.
Even the typical after hour clinic can be jam packed with patients, and waiting times can be excessive. The physician house call provides a far more user friendly alternative to the after hour clinic. These services may be available for patients of all ages with almost any urgent care problem. Instead of having to endure endless wait-a-thons in the ER or after hour clinic, patients rest in he comfort of their own home or hotel room while the doctor is enroute.
For patients with painful conditions, or those with weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, and many other conditions, remaining at home instead of sitting in the waiting room of an after hour clinic or ER can truly transform the comfort level of the patient. For many conditions, such as generalized infections, rest is a requirement for healing. For patients who need rest, it is counter-productive for them to have to travel to the after hour clinic, sit endlessly in a waiting room, then again wait during treatment, then travel home, stopping along the way at a pharmacy to wait in line to submit prescriptions, then wait further for the prescription to be filled, then finally return home.
It is likely that many patient’s condition are actually worsened by all of this effort and stress. In the United States, doctors of the past understood this well. Only recently have physicians renewed their interest in house call medicine as a kinder, gentler way of rendering acute or urgent healthcare.
While many geriatric physician house call practices have sprung up nationwide during the past decade, a handful of innovative services, such as that of Urgent Med Housecalls, caters to patients of all ages. Urgent Med Housecalls, based in San Francisco, offers the ultimate user friendly experience for patients wanting to avoid the after hour clinic. Care is provided by experienced emergency physicians who bring medications, IV fluids, injections, stitches, splints, instant lab tests, even x-rays and more to the patient.
These convenient services are now offered throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, south to the Monterey Peninsula. Services are available 7 days a week. Physician house call services are transforming the way healthcare is offered in America. Patient centered medicine has returned and is here to stay.