New study aims to find out if doctor house calls can save money

PORTLAND, Ore. – A local nonprofit group and a U.S. senator hope doctor house calls will help curb the rising cost of health care in America.

The country spent more than half a trillion dollars on Medicare last year and almost half of that was on hospital visits.

House calls used to be common, now a three-year study launched Friday aims to determine if they can help keep sick patients out of the hospital and cut costs.

Portland-based Housecall Providers is the only health care provider west of Texas involved in the study. Its goal is to provide better health care at a lower price, and it is treating chronically ill patients who have spent time in the hospital in the last year and have difficulty eating or changing clothes on their own.

Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden was at an adult foster care home in the Sellwood neighborhood of Southeast Portland Friday. He's a big proponent of home health care and he lobbied for house call providers to take part in the study.

"Care at home and the kind of thing you're part of makes people both happier and saves the government money," he said to patient David Stezaker.

Dr. Benneth Husted also visited Stezaker and two other Medicare patients living at the adult foster care facility.

"It's much more cost efficient to have us doing what we're doing than having folks like these patients ending up with crises - medical crises - that require lengthy hospitalizations," she said. "So at worst what happens is they don't get care until they've ended up in the emergency rooms."

The thinking is if doctors don't make house calls then some patients will skip going to the doctor altogether and if they do go, it may take an ambulance ride and a lot of risk to their health.

The increasing expense of an ER visit led Wyden to call for more Medicare spending on programs like Housecall Providers. But he and other home care supporters need more data to make their case. That's why Stezaker is one of 10,000 homebound Medicare patients taking part in the study to find out how much can be saved.

The patients in the study are considered the sickest of the sick. Just to be included they have to have at least two chronic conditions. They have to have difficulty performing simple tasks like dressing and bathing. And they have to have spent time in the hospital in the past year.

Stezaker, who had a heart attack, left the hospital after a six-week stay, and he's been able to stay out with the help of a few house calls.

These health care groups involved in the study, such as Housecall Providers, are being told if they can save the government money, they will get to share in the savings.

"I want to tell your story to everybody back there in the Senate because this is what the Medicare program ought to look like," Wyden said.