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PORTABLE CARE
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Dr. Ted Faull of Boardman is starting a house call business, HouseCall MD.
WARREN — It’s “Back to the Future” for Dr. Ted W. Faull, who has joined the growing number of physicians who are making house calls the focus of their practice.
Dr. Faull said his practice, HouseCall MD, is geared primarily toward elderly patients for whom it is difficult or impossible to leave home and go to a doctor’s office. He said he plans to do house calls 20 to 30 hours a week for Medicare-age patients, with the goal of enabling patients to remain at home, thus reducing costly hospitalizations and nursing home placements.
He also has office hours at the Elm Road Clinic in Bazetta Township and at Austintown Immediate Care.
Dr. Faull, 50, said he realized as a teenager that he wanted to be a country doctor. Medicine was in the family — his mother is a retired nurse, and two of his uncles were physicians.
Dr. Faull and his family returned to the area in August after he spent eight years in Honduras as a missionary doctor. He said he came back to be near his parents, James and Lynn Faull, of Howland, and to help rebuild the family business, Faull and Son in Niles.
Dr. Faull and his wife, Maggie, whom he met in college, have five children and a granddaughter, Nadia.
The family business, formerly Faull & Son Tool and Die, was founded by his grandfather, Fred. The firm, which does metal stamping for the furniture industry, has nine employees, but formerly employed about 50, Dr. Faull said.
Dr. Faull graduated in 1976 from Mohawk High School in Bessemer, Pa. His older siblings graduated from Poland Seminary High School.
He studied at Wheaton College in Illinois. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine in 1984 and completed a three-year residency in family practice at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in 1987.
Dr. Faull went to medical school on a National Health Services Corps scholarship, which carried with it a four-year obligation to serve in an area where a family physician was needed, and which he repaid by working in Junction, Texas, near San Antonio.
After that, he worked in urgent care and occupational medicine in Rockford, Ill.
Dr. Faull said he was inspired to make house calls his primary focus by Dr. Donald Rumbaugh of New Jersey. He said it took Dr. Rumbaugh, who was also a missionary physician in Honduras, only two or three months to become busy in his house-call practice.
He said there are a number of factors that make a physician house-call practice an attractive business at this time.
First, he said, Medicare has made it financially feasible with reimbursements that are higher than those for an office call. He said reimbursements ranges from $150 to $175 for the first visit to a new patient, and up to $100, depending on what is involved, for follow-up visits.
Additionally, Dr. Faull said that doing house calls “probably has the lowest liability insurance costs” in the profession.
Also, start-up costs are less. Most of what he needs he carries in a traditional black bag that contains a multitude of small devices, including a stethoscope, thermometer and devices to check blood pressure, examine ears and eyes, check sugar levels and pulse and oxygen levels.
Dr. Faull said what he does not carry in the bag are narcotics or money.
If more sophisticated equipment is needed, mobile X-ray and lab services are available. But, he said, “90 percent of the time, I can make a diagnosis and prescribe medicine” without additional equipment, he said.
“I expect a family member or caregiver to be there when I make a call, or I can work with visiting nurses,” he said.
Being a house-call doctor is flexible and serves a great need. A lot of older people have a hard time getting to a doctor’s office, he said.
He said making house calls is personally satisfying and helps with the diagnosis.
“I am able to visit with people in their homes who would otherwise be struggling to get to the doctor’s office and then waiting to see the doctor. It is also a better setting to evaluate what is going on in a person’s life,” Dr. Faull said.
In addition to his medical practice, he is active in the family business. His father, who is 81, still runs the day-to-day operation. Dr. Faull is doing the finances, which his mother used to handle, and marketing.
alcorn@vindy.com
SEE ALSO: Medicare housecalls.