An Emerging Model of Primary Care for Older Adults: The House Call–Home Care Practice

Abstract

House calls to older adults have become more common, in part related to the emergence of medical practices that either emphasize or exclusively provide house calls. In this article we seek to describe organizational, clinician, and patient characteristics of house call-home medical care practices in the United States. We conducted telephone interviews with clinicians representing 36 randomly selected practices from across the United States. This study found that house call-home care practices typically are recently formed small groups of physicians and nurse practitioners that provide in-home primary care, especially chronic disease care, to Medicare beneficiaries. Clinicians are motivated by the opportunity to improve care and to maintain autonomy. This emerging model may represent a mutually beneficial trend for older adults and physicians.