Doctor on demand: House calls make a comeback

Home medical care gets a boost as startups aim to reduce some of the pain of hospital visits by offering personalised care at the doorstep

One may assume that you can’t get a

root canal

at home, but Bengaluru-based dentist Dr Srivats Bharadwaj disagrees. He runs Vatsalya clinic that offers home visits, by dentists with a suitcase of equipment in tow. Dr Bharadwaj believes that the brutal Bengaluru traffic, coupled with the number of sittings dentistry often requires, is a lot to ask of a sick patient, so he’s been taking the service to them. “It’s like in black and white movies when they would say ‘muneem ji ko bulao’. To make sick people wait at your hospital for two hours is a human rights violation. Who likes the hospital environment? Healing doesn’t happen because you’re given some medicine, it happens because of care, affection and empathy,” he says.

Dr Bharadwaj isn’t the only one reviving the house call, and personalized home care. Even startups are giving it a modern twist by letting patients pull out a

smartphone

and call a doctor to their home. No more waiting for hours in busy hospitals to meet time-strapped doctors, or risking infections.

There’s also the big question of trust. Col A J Verma remembers that back in the day, his father had gone to Sri Lanka for a seminar, and upon returning, he noticed a terrible rash all over his body. They went to a specialist, who diagnosed it as herpes. When days of medication led to no improvement, they finally turned to a family physician who, after some extensive questioning, realized it was just an allergic reaction to seafood and cured him in no time. So, when Delhi-based Col Verma, 65, found himself with an excruciatingly painful skin condition, he decided to turn to FamPhy, an app that brings a doctor to your doorstep through a call or a click.

Col Verma says, “When Dr Kalita of FamPhy came to my house, he spent 2-3 hours trying to understand my history, because I am also a cancer patient. He took a very holistic view, and has become someone whose opinion I really trust.”

Initiatives like FamPhy are looking to revive home-based healthcare in India, not just for the elderly or bedridden, but anyone — the busy, the lazy, and the hospital-detesting. Dr Soumik Kalita, founder of FamPhy, says, “My parents were family doctors, and looked after people in the remotest areas of the country. Today, there is a problem of over-specialization, and a lack of person-centric medical care. When you go to someone’s house, you see their surroundings, get a sense of their medical history, and then decide how to treat them.”

The home healthcare landscape in India is looking up. The industry is projected to reach $6.2 billion by 2020, and could replace up to 65% unnecessary hospital visits in India and reduce hospital costs by 20%, according to CMR’s India Home Healthcare Report 2016. An increasing number of players offer everything from post-operative care to physiotherapy, and lab tests to post-natal assistance. Some are startups looking to disrupt the medical ecosystem, while others are hospitals like Apollo that have expanded to home-care to tackle overcrowding of hospitals.

Portea

Medical has treated over 3.5 lakh patients in their homes in 16 Indian cities. Their CEO

Meena Ganesh

says, “As a country, we have been focussing on investing in hospital care, but nothing else. People in their 30s and 40s are getting chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension more often now, and we’re looking to cater to this population.” Other than that, they offer senior care, regular health checkups, and even set up an ICU at home if needed.

Some are more skeptical of the emerging trend. Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, group medical director of Max Healthcare, says that while they do have a home-care division, certain challenges have come up. “It isn’t cheap to get a doctor at home. With us, an MBBS doctor’s visit costs Rs 3000, while a specialist charges Rs 5000. When people are paying that much money, they want the logistics to be according to their own liking, which is difficult. Specialists are busy and want to optimise their time.”

CEO of Healthcare at Home Vivek Srivastava likens the rise of home healthcare to e-commerce. “People want everything to be delivered to their homes. Why should healthcare be any different?”

Also, in terms of cost, Srivastava argues that it is cheaper — according to their calculations, a home-based ICU stay is 30% cheaper than what it would be in a hospital.

Dr Bharadwaj believes in outcome-based pricing rather than a pre-determined fee to rebuild the doctor-patient trust that rising rates and over-prescription have gotten in the way of. One of his patients is Ajay Parikh whose family of three have all received dental care at home. “You’re busy during the week, and dread the traffic on the weekend, so you keep postponing the appointment. By the time you finally go to the doctor, the problem has gotten worse. This way, you’re able to intervene a lot faster.”Home medical care gets a boost as startups aim to reduce some of the pain of hospital visits by offering personalised care at the doorstep


One may assume that you can’t get a root canal at home, but Bengaluru-based dentist Dr Srivats Bharadwaj disagrees. He runs Vatsalya clinic that offers home visits, by dentists with a suitcase of equipment in tow. Dr Bharadwaj believes that the brutal Bengaluru traffic, coupled with the number of sittings dentistry often requires, is a lot to ask of a sick patient, so he’s been taking the service to them. “It’s like in black and white movies when they would say ‘muneem ji ko bulao’. To make sick people wait at your hospital for two hours is a human rights violation. Who likes the hospital environment? Healing doesn’t happen because you’re given some medicine, it happens because of care, affection and empathy,” he says.

Dr Bharadwaj isn’t the only one reviving the house call, and personalized home care. Even startups are giving it a modern twist by letting patients pull out a smartphone and call a doctor to their home. No more waiting for hours in busy hospitals to meet time-strapped doctors, or risking infections.

There’s also the big question of trust. Col A J Verma remembers that back in the day, his father had gone to Sri Lanka for a seminar, and upon returning, he noticed a terrible rash all over his body. They went to a specialist, who diagnosed it as herpes. When days of medication led to no improvement, they finally turned to a family physician who, after some extensive questioning, realized it was just an allergic reaction to seafood and cured him in no time. So, when Delhi-based Col Verma, 65, found himself with an excruciatingly painful skin condition, he decided to turn to FamPhy, an app that brings a doctor to your doorstep through a call or a click.

Col Verma says, “When Dr Kalita of FamPhy came to my house, he spent 2-3 hours trying to understand my history, because I am also a cancer patient. He took a very holistic view, and has become someone whose opinion I really trust.”

Initiatives like FamPhy are looking to revive home-based healthcare in India, not just for the elderly or bedridden, but anyone — the busy, the lazy, and the hospital-detesting. Dr Soumik Kalita, founder of FamPhy, says, “My parents were family doctors, and looked after people in the remotest areas of the country. Today, there is a problem of over-specialization, and a lack of person-centric medical care. When you go to someone’s house, you see their surroundings, get a sense of their medical history, and then decide how to treat them.”

The home healthcare landscape in India is looking up. The industry is projected to reach $6.2 billion by 2020, and could replace up to 65% unnecessary hospital visits in India and reduce hospital costs by 20%, according to CMR’s India Home Healthcare Report 2016. An increasing number of players offer everything from post-operative care to physiotherapy, and lab tests to post-natal assistance. Some are startups looking to disrupt the medical ecosystem, while others are hospitals like Apollo that have expanded to home-care to tackle overcrowding of hospitals.

Portea Medical has treated over 3.5 lakh patients in their homes in 16 Indian cities. Their CEO Meena Ganesh says, “As a country, we have been focussing on investing in hospital care, but nothing else. People in their 30s and 40s are getting chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension more often now, and we’re looking to cater to this population.” Other than that, they offer senior care, regular health checkups, and even set up an ICU at home if needed.

Some are more skeptical of the emerging trend. Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, group medical director of Max Healthcare, says that while they do have a home-care division, certain challenges have come up. “It isn’t cheap to get a doctor at home. With us, an MBBS doctor’s visit costs Rs 3000, while a specialist charges Rs 5000. When people are paying that much money, they want the logistics to be according to their own liking, which is difficult. Specialists are busy and want to optimise their time.”

CEO of Healthcare at Home Vivek Srivastava likens the rise of home healthcare to e-commerce. “People want everything to be delivered to their homes. Why should healthcare be any different?”

Also, in terms of cost, Srivastava argues that it is cheaper — according to their calculations, a home-based ICU stay is 30% cheaper than what it would be in a hospital.

Dr Bharadwaj believes in outcome-based pricing rather than a pre-determined fee to rebuild the doctor-patient trust that rising rates and over-prescription have gotten in the way of. One of his patients is Ajay Parikh whose family of three have all received dental care at home. “You’re busy during the week, and dread the traffic on the weekend, so you keep postponing the appointment. By the time you finally go to the doctor, the problem has gotten worse. This way, you’re able to intervene a lot faster.”