Most older people in the U.S. have a Norman Rockwell image of the good old days when doctors still made house calls. It was personalized medicine at its best, with that special one-to-one relationship with a doctor in your own home.

Everything old is new again, though the modern versions may be somewhat different from the originals. So it is with doctors and house calls. Heal is a service that provides doctor visits to the home in select markets around the country. The company recent announced that it was expanding coverage to include New York City. This means that the service is available to 75 million more potential patients. The company also announced that it has acquired Doctors n Call which provided 42,000 house calls in New York in 2018. The Heal service is available as an in-network provider for most major health insurance programs, and is available to many Medicare Advantage participants.

The new house call depends on digital health to be more efficient. Heal also provides the Heal Hub telehealth device for patients with chronic conditions. This remote patient monitoring system allows physicians to track vital signs and it issues alerts when a patient’s numbers are out of a targeted range.

According to the company, their house call service has resulted in significantly lower healthcare costs for the insurance companies. It has reduced unnecessary Emergency Department and Urgent Care visits by as much as 71%, while reducing expensive hospital admissions by 28%.

Through health tech advances, the home is rapidly becoming the focal point for the delivery of healthcare services. With companies such as Heal delivering real savings while providing a more responsive and convenient service for their patients, we expect to see this trend to grow rapidly.