The Concept…

When getting out to get medical attention is difficult or even impossible, The Call Doctor Medical Group, Inc. puts the doctor on the doorstep – when necessary within 60 minutes and without any advance appointments.

We deliver qualified, caring, board-certified physicians and nurse practitioners who provide expert in-home diagnosis and treatment at a fraction of the cost of an emergency room visit.

The Company…

The Call Doctor Medical Group was established in 1985, founded on the principle that prompt, comprehensive medical care delivered in the home is more desirable and less expensive than hospital-based options.

The concept was pioneered by C. Gresham Bayne, MD, who built the first mobile van and began making calls to prove the concept clinically. Over two years and more than 250 housecalls, Dr. Bayne re-engineered the van and pinpointed which items proved crucial to the mobile healthcare mission.

In 1987, Call Doctor Medical Group, Inc. was formed as a multi-specialty family practice with a group of senior staff physicians at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. With $300,000 seed capital, the first mobile physician treatment center rapidly expanded the practice. Over the next three years, three sequential hospital contracts were developed in the San Diego area.

Already, Call Doctor is the leading supplier of comprehensive medical care delivered in the home in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Currently, we serve a wide variety of patient populations, amassing some 60,000 housecalls to date.

Under its professional management, the company is healthy and forward-looking. Our mission is to become America’s leader in providing management and support services to physicians and medical plans seeking to enhance service and quality of care in the home environment. Over the next five years, we intend to roll out our concept across America.

With 1-800-CALL DOC, the doctor will see you now… at home.
That’s the cornerstone of our special brand of services. Neither an ambulance nor substitute for 911, Call Doctor is more like a well-equipped, professionally staffed emergency room that comes to the patient’s home.

We strongly believe that there is no better place to receive medical treatment than in the comfort and healing environment of one’s own home. The busy schedules of today¹s private practice physicians, coupled with a sick patient’s lack of transportation and aversion to a hospital setting, fuels the demand for the Call Doctor service.

Cost Containment Without Compromising Care…

Cost controls have emerged as a priority concern and compelling force for the overhaul of America’s healthcare system.

Call Doctor is the solution for the daunting problems which plague federal government and healthcare payors. Among these are over-utilization of ambulances, high emergency room costs. Government reports note that hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted each year just on medically unnecessary transportation. By the end of 1999, newly enacted legislation will restrict Medicare patients from using this “free” transportation to the emergency room.

Further, it is widely recognized that emergency rooms are the most inefficient and costly places to receive primary care. Approximately 80-85% of the 100 million ER visits each year are not necessary to save life or limb. When a patient does reach the emergency room, studies have shown that they receive tests and procedures which can easily be accomplished by Call Doctor physicians in the home.

Recognized value
Acceptance of the Call Doctor concept is affirmed through coverage under Medicare, private insurance, and Workers Compensation insurance. Last January, the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) approved a doubling of maximum reimbursement for urgent housecalls. Another significant change is the allowance for the first time of nurse practitioners to make housecalls.

Revolutionizing Patient Care Delivery…

Fully utilizing advances in technology and medicine, Call Doctor physicians can effectively diagnose and treat most medical problems in the comfort of the patient’s home. Capabilities cover a wide range of treatments from setting broken bones to caring for chronic conditions, from flu symptoms to food poisoning. Equally important, Call Doctor improves quality of life for our patients, while reducing overall costs for the healthcare industry.

The service begins with a call to the national 1-800-CALL DOC triage and dispatching number. Using special protocols, a trained triage operator elicits information from the caller and determines the urgency of the medical problem. Upon classification of urgency, the operator advises the caller of the necessary medical intervention. When an emergency situation exists, the caller is instructed to hang up and call 911. If the patient’s situation is classified urgent or non-urgent, the caller will be scheduled for a Call Doctor visit at home.

The physician is dispatched to the patient’s home, equipped with every diagnostic tool necessary to assess the patient’s symptoms, as well as a full supply of standard emergency-care drugs to treat them. If the patient requires X-rays, a Certified Radiation Technologist, will be dispatched to take and develop the X-ray film.

Using portable lab and EKG instruments, the physician can make any emergency decision and treatment available at the time of the housecall. All licensures and permits are currently approved by Medicare and state offices.

Crucial to the successful operation of our mobile program is a fully integrated customized software program which allows the physician central access to and remote charting of past medical records.

We’re Exceptional Team Players…

Call Doctors utilizes a team approach, supporting physicians and nurse practitioners, Home Health Agencies, Discharge Planners and Caregivers with our corporate resources. Throughout, the focus is placed on the patient’s need. Our board-certified physicians appreciate that fact, welcoming the opportunity to be close to the patient and having a more hands-on role in testing and outcomes.

The physician always makes the initial call. Now, with the recent advent of Medicare payment for nurse practitioners making housecalls, most follow-up calls can be performed by non-physicians under telephonic supervision using the Call Doctor communication and triage network.

Releasing physicians from the routine follow-up housecalls not only improves job satisfaction, but also allows the physicians to adopt the Case Management role recognized as crucial for quality assurance by the HCFA and American Academy of Home Care Physicians. This role takes the form of educational lectures to regional home health organizations, generating referrals of new patients; review of medical records and teaching of the nurse practitioners, thereby supporting the team concept; and telephoning home health professionals and referring professionals for oversight, paid by Medicare.

Even more important, freeing up the physicians allows immediate MD triage in urgent cases, with same-day response for 90% of new patients. Now, the physician can truly replace the failed hospital-based paradigm with a new comprehensive case management approach to providing care in the home.

With powerful portable technology, the physician is the emergency room

Technology has enabled new diagnostic and therapeutic modalities to be used in the home setting, essentially bringing the hospital home. Again and again, The Call Doctor Company has proven the effectiveness of these leading edge portable technologies in supporting urgent care housecalls.

The revolution in micro-electronics has delivered a new generation of hand-held diagnostic equipment, often so compact that it can be carried in a physician’s pockets. And it’s equipment that can detect life threatening conditions with the same certainty as hospital emergency rooms and laboratories. Imagine a fully functional EKG machine no bigger than a box of chocolates and a pulse oximeter the size of a walnut.

Well, they’re here today!

Numerous, Large and Growing Markets

Our core business is serving the homebound elderly and the disabled, a clinical population which is currently underserved and in fact undesirable to virtually every managed care type of organization. Actually, we have the ability to accommodate any homebound person in need of medical care – and to provide care in the workplace as well.

Presently, the elderly comprise well over half our patient base. These patients are characterized by an average age of 82 years and are in intense need of medical services, nearly all of which can now be provided at home.

Because of our aging population, senior citizens are growing in number. The over 75 population is the fastest growing population in our society and retains the highest average net worth as a group. In the year 2000, there will be 5.1 million U.S. citizens over age 85, up from 2.2 million in 1980. Almost half of the elderly over age 85 require assistance with activities of daily living. The American Geriatric Society recommends monthly visits for the frail elderly in the ambulatory office setting, and Medicare has reimbursed these treatments for decades.
Another trend working in our favor is the fact that the earlier discharge from hospital of patients has escalated the need for sophisticated home care delivery. Further, there is an increasing number of younger people at home who require skilled care and treatment for AIDS, cancer, asthma, complicated pregnancies, serious infections and serious injuries.

Another market – emergency room conversions – is truly astounding. If just 1% of the annual hundred million emergency room visits were converted to housecalls, revenues would exceed $200,000,000 a year while saving society some two billion dollars.

Overall, the healthcare market is rapidly shifting to home care as a basis for delivery of services. The role of the physician in such a shift is mandated by law, expected by the public, and gradually being recognized by the industry representatives. Here, Call Doctor helps ensure continuity of care by working closely with primary care physicians.

Alliances in the healthcare field will also power our success. Patients are referred by primary care physicians, home health nurses or word of mouth, usually in an acute or subacute situation requiring physician intervention. We are also aligning with hospital chains, IPAs, physician groups, home health companies, hospices and the managed care plans to enhance quality of care while driving costs down.

Structured for exceptional success
The Call Doctor Company is positioned as an acute care alternative to the emergency room, with unique advantages in cost effectiveness, convenience, high technology, and close physician/patient relationships. A higher level of care is provided at home due to our technological prowess.

Because of these capabilities and our unparalleled experience, we are the dominant player on the national scene in an entirely new industry. Fact is, Call Doctor is unique in the United States as the only comprehensive housecall service utilizing board-certified physicians, telephone triage, dispatch and mobile X-ray support. While the concept of providing physician housecalls might seem simple, the operation and logistics are extremely complex. There is no company in America which has more experience with such complexities than Call Doctor, and it would be extremely difficult for any other organization to challenge our leadership position.

Building The Brand

The Call Doctor Company has sole ownership of the proprietary tradename, plus all rights to the 1-800-CALL DOC toll-free phone number. We plan to establish a national network of housecall physicians to provide cost-effective, in-home physician care under the Call Doctor brand.

To achieve a high degree of market penetration, we are creating awareness of and preference for our brand through a variety of techniques…

  • Each van we put on the road is a rolling billboard.
  • Flyers, radio and television advertising reach our patient core population.
  • Comprehensive marketing and communications programs are directed to a broad audience encompassing patients, families, managed care organizations, payors, group medical practices/PPOs, and self-insured corporations.

Our Vision: To become acknowledged nationally as the foremost provider of mobile healthcare.

The Call Doctor Company vision supports four key core values…

  1. The patient comes first. Care and respect for those who need our services are our highest priorities.
  2. We value people – our healthcare professionals, those who work in our vans and in our offices, our families and others with whom we live. A healthy staff makes healthy patients.
  3. Creating value is at the heart of what we do. We expect people to profit by working with us. We expect our business to make a sound profit as well.
  4. We serve the communities in which we live and work. As we grow, we will serve more broadly and become more widely known as good citizens.

Our vision is sharpened by six strategic initiatives…

  • Apply innovative medical technologies, adopting the best of mobile diagnostics and additional emerging healthcare concepts.
  • Provide growing opportunities for healthcare professionals, more jobs and more chances to optimize knowledge, skills and effectiveness.
  • Lead a team of committed people, showing the way for those who want to perform worthwhile work at high levels of excellence.
  • Restore dignity to the doctor-patient relationship, rebuilding respect and trust to enhance healthcare for all concerned.
  • Reduce healthcare costs at the point of care, making good health more affordable, starting right at home.
  • Build value for our patients, our people, our investors. Make this a better place to obtain healthcare, a better place to work and a better place to put your money.