When the doctor comes calling

Northwest resident Etta Weaver is quick with a smile and even quicker with a kind word. Around her home, however, the 86-year-old isn’t as swift.

Age and arthritis make moving a chore, and she needs considerable care to keep various life-threatening ailments at bay.

The Washington Hospital Center’s geriatric division understands that some seniors can’t just pick up and go to see their doctors.

So the doctors come to them.

House calls may seem like a relic from another, less-paperwork-intensive age, but the hospital in Northwest hopes the visits bring comfort and dignity to seniors in their twilight years.

And, its proponents hope, save the taxpayer money in the process.

The hospital’s Medical House Calls Program began in 1999 under the guidance of Drs. George Taler and Eric De Jonge and in recent years has expanded in both staff size (17) and talent (social workers have joined the team). The program reaches roughly 150 to 170 patients a week.

Dr. De Jonge, director of geriatrics at the hospital, says the program took off with the addition of social workers.

“You need to have more than just medical staff,” he says.

The biggest obstacle remains reimbursement concerns, although the District’s Medicaid program is “very progressive” in helping assuage expenses.

Ultimately, Dr. De Jonge estimates that treating people through house calls costs $35,000 a year, but the same patient would rack up $75,000 in bills if he or she were shuttled in and out of the hospital.

Savings are a pragmatic perk to the program, but Dr. De Jonge labors toward a different set of numbers.

“Eighty percent of deaths occur in [hospitals or other] institutions in D.C.,” he says. “In our practice, it’s 25 percent.”

Each week, the program’s staff convenes in the hospital’s Trinity Square annex in Northeast to cover a variety of concerns, everything from updating staffers on the patients’ conditions to agreeing on the right background for the program’s Thanksgiving card.

The dialogue is open, frank and occasionally leavened by humor. The physicians and nurses deal with life-and-death issues, and their patients aren’t likely to mend and live another decade or two.

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