Introduction to House Calls and HCCI

Introduction to Home-Based Primary Care (“House Calls”) and HCCI

Home-based primary care (HBPC), also known as the “modern-day house call,” provides medical care to frail, medically complex patients who are either homebound or home-limited. These are patients for whom visiting a doctor in their office is either difficult or impossible. Physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants provide ongoing care to these patients in their homes – often through to the end of their lives. Thanks to advances in modern technology, a visit can even include lab tests, an EKG, x-ray, ultrasound, and more. House calls have not only been proven to dramatically improve health outcomes and the quality of life for patients and their caregivers, but also can reduce the overall cost of care by reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

The Home Centered Care Institute (HCCI) is a national nonprofit organization focused on scaling home-based primary care and bringing it into the healthcare mainstream. In addition to being an authoritative source for clinical and operational best practices for house call programs, HCCI is advancing the field through education, consulting, research, and advocacy.

To learn more about HBPC and HCCI, watch the video.

Rethinking Modern Medicine

The Home Centered Care Institute’s video, “Rethinking Modern Medicine,” highlights what happens during an initial home-based primary care (HBPC) visit, including the patient assessment, exam, and conversations with the caregiver. At the same time, it shares the feeling of house calls, as they help people feel cared for and connected.

Known as the “modern-day house call,” HBPC is exactly what it sounds like — physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants traveling to a patient’s home, or the place they call “home,” to deliver primary care services.

Background

The Future of Healthcare is In The Home

Our healthcare system’s shift from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursement will dramatically increase the utilization of home-based primary care—reducing healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes for society’s most vulnerable patients.

Download and read HCCI’s Prospectus

Health Care’s Perfect StormToday, a perfect storm has developed that is fanning the sails of the modern house call movement.

Home care medicine can help health systems achieve the Triple Aim – markedly improving the quality of life for our nation’s most complex patients, delivering substantially better experiences for patients and caregivers, and dramatically reducing health care costs.

Diverse factors are driving the growing trend toward home-based primary care and aging in place. HCCI founder, Dr. Thomas Cornwell, calls this convergence the “perfect storm” in his report on the state of house call medicine today.

Click here to read Dr. Cornwell’s report.