DALLAS: Homebound elderly patients who aren’t ready for hospice care are benefiting from an old-fashioned concept that’s regaining ground.
Dr. Romin Shah makes house calls, and Diana Fabiano, who has taken care of her frail, 85-year-old mother with dementia for the past 15 years, is extremely grateful.
Shah arrives at Fabiano’s home carrying Rosemary Donnelly’s chart and a backpack filled with his stethoscope, blood pressure cuff and other medical equipment.
The geriatrician was working as a hospice physician four years ago when he realized that some patients were being turned away because they weren’t terminally ill. Hospice doctors make house calls. Yet the patients were so fragile and sick, they needed home care.
Shah and his business partner, Johnnie Garmon, decided to fill the void by launching Providence Care, a medical practice that offers physician and nurse practitioner house calls to homebound patients…