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- Page navigation anchor for RE: advanced illness home careRE: advanced illness home care
Thanks very much for this short review and plea for advanced home care as a positive, engaging, challenging practise style. I very much agree with your points.
I did what I called House Calls for Frail Elderly for the last 4 years of my family practise, and retired one year ago, having been able to recruit a young woman physician to take over the practise. For my model, I used the framework of frail elder care developed in 2012 by the MoH, and I drew on the work of Dr Mark Nowaczynski in Toronto. I did indeed find the practise rewarding, challenging, interesting, and quite doable.
I found that about 15% of the practise was actively palliative at any given time. Everyone had to meet criteria of frailty and chronic illness. Also, about 15% of visits were acute care. I had to make sure I had open slots each week to accommodate the types of appointments, and that was important in order to stay on time and to finish the day at a reasonable time. The office allowed me to stay a member of the FHO so that my appointments were made through the office, my Billings were submitted through there, and, most importantly, the server kept my electronic charts. I charted on a laptop, using remote connection to the server, which only failed me in remote areas from time to time.
I did accept patients by referral, then rostered them into the Family Health Organization of the Family Health Team in Cambridge, Ontario. I pored over the billing pages of the OMA a...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.