Paging Dr. Gupta: New House Calls
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Wasted time in waiting rooms, conflicts with work, and the need to book an appointment months in advance -- those are among the most frequent complaints about health care. But now, some doctors are offering greater convenience by making house calls. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from CNN Center to tell us a little bit more about this. Sanjay -- good morning. Do you offer house calls, I'm curious to know?</s>SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Just on television, Soledad.</s>O'BRIEN: Oh, good answer there.</s>GUPTA: It is amazing, though, and I'm sure you've had to wait, Soledad, in the past. A lot of people do have to wait, sometimes too long for doctors appointments. So, some enterprising doctors have decided to do something about it, transforming perhaps your living room into an examining room. Not cheap, but perhaps effective.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Doctors who make house calls may seem like a service of the distant past, but they do still exist.</s>DR. MICHAEL WEINBERGER, ON CALL NY: It's, you know, after 6:00, it's the weekend, it's a holiday, and you just can't get ahold of your doctor, and it's something that you can't wait. If you call us, you'll see a doctor within an hour, either at your house or at your place of work.</s>GUPTA: While there are other visiting doctor services that cater primarily to elderly patients who are unable to leave their homes, Dr. Weinberger and Dr. Levine run a practice that focuses on convenience.</s>DR. ANDREW LEVINE, ON CALL NY: There are also a lot of people that are willing to pay for the convenience of having a doctor see them at their residence.</s>GUPTA: Among their patients: New York City tourists, frenzied business people and working parents. As former emergency room doctors, they saw a gap in treating common ailments, including fever, cough, sore throat, back or stomach pain.</s>WEINBERGER: These sort of urgent medical problems are the lowest priority, and are, you know, appropriately the last to be seen there.</s>GUPTA: The doctors admit home care isn't perfect. Follow-up care and access to specialists is limited. Extensive testing has to be done in their office. It's also not cheap, at $250 per visit. Insurance companies rarely pay.</s>WEINBERGER: The difference of seeing somebody in their home and seeing how relaxed and comfortable they are there, it's a great sort of professional feeling to help them in their own home.</s>GUPTA: And while house calls may play only a small part in the health care system, they can be a big help for those who need them.</s>O'BRIEN: Well, Sanjay, how come insurance companies don't pay for some of it? Obviously, the 250 bucks is a pretty big fee, and only part of that is for the actually doctor's visit itself as opposed to the travel time, et cetera. But why doesn't an insurance company underwrite at least a portion of that?</s>GUPTA: Well, basically think of it like this: If there is some reason that the patient cannot get to the hospital, other than a matter of convenience, the insurance company may cover a little bit of that, such as the elderly or disabled. If someone is doing it purely for a matter of convenience, insurance companies haven't come around yet to covering that sort of thing. It may happen in the future. But I think, Soledad, after talking to a lot of people about this, this is still going to be a relatively small part. It's probably not going to be the answer to cutting down on waiting times for the vast majority of the public.</s>O'BRIEN: How does somebody find a doctor who will make house calls?</s>GUPTA: There are Web sites available. I will tell you as well that it's typically located in big cities, like New York, Atlanta, cities like that. Some of the smaller communities, it's not as profitable for these doctors to actually make house calls. They don't get enough volume of patients to do that. But there are about 1.5 million visits a year, house call visits a year by doctors. So, you know, the numbers are there. But look for Web sites. There are sites on the Internet. And hospitals sometimes have services as well.</s>O'BRIEN: Hey, I think it's a great idea. Sanjay, thanks, as always. Appreciate it.</s>GUPTA: All right. Good seeing you. Take care.</s>O'BRIEN: Likewise. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.