Sometimes reaching a physician’s office is not easy, not practical, or not possible. That should not determine whether you receive care.

House calls were once simply how medicine worked. They declined sharply through the early and middle twentieth century, and patients of every age, income, and level of mobility were left to travel to offices and hospitals for everything. Demand for the older arrangement has grown steadily in recent years, and a good number of physicians are visiting homes again.

What A Home Visit Includes

Care at home is shaped around the patient rather than the room, and can cover anything from routine prevention through to management of complex chronic illness:

• Primary care visits and routine follow-up
• Osteopathic manipulative treatment
• Sick visits and treatment of minor injuries
• Geriatric care management
• Medication review and management
• Wound care
• Nutrition and diabetic counseling
• Palliative and dementia care
• Transitional care following a hospital stay

You do not need to change your primary care physician to be seen. Dr. Dalton can take over as your ongoing provider, or work alongside the physician you already have.

Who Benefits Most

In-home care keeps people out of hospitals, emergency departments, and nursing homes. More than a million older Americans are entirely homebound, and several million more are limited enough that a trip to a clinic is a genuine ordeal. When the ordeal is large enough, appointments get postponed, conditions progress, and treatment becomes both harder and more expensive than it needed to be.

There is a second benefit that is harder to quantify. A physician seeing you at home learns things no office visit reveals: what is in the kitchen, how many stairs there are, whether the bathroom is safe, how the medications are actually organized. That context changes the plan.

Where We Travel

Home visits are based out of Cedar City and cover the surrounding area. During summer months, when Dr. Dalton is practicing in Caliente, Nevada, visits can be arranged there as well. Contact the office to confirm coverage for your address and to ask about any travel charge.

Arranging A Visit

Call the office to schedule. It is useful to have your medication list and any recent records available, and to let us know about access considerations such as stairs, parking, or a gate code when you book.

Insurance And Cost

We now accept insurance. Contact the office to confirm whether your plan covers a home visit, as credentialing with additional providers is in progress. The Sliding Fee Schedule, based on household size and income, applies to home visits as well.