Covers: the need for health care services to the home (home care organizations, family caregivers, etc.): therapeutic value of home care; the role of technology in facilitating home care (asesessment, dignosis & treatment; supervision & training; support groups, etc.); patients & health care provider satisfaction with remotely provided health care; economic impacts of home care (broadband infrastructure deployment costs, role of government, etc.); & policy issues & recommendations.

Small-town doctor Thomas Stern built a practice filled with memorable characters in rural Oregon. Then he moved to Southern California to work as technical advisor on the beloved TV series, "Marcus Welby, M.D". His life story is filled with episodes that are thought-provoking, heart-warming, and even rib-tickling.

The information in these pages will either excite you into beginning that house-call practice right away or scare you into keeping your day job. Either way, I'm glad you've chosen to learn about my happiness with beginning a house-call practice and to learn from my struggles to maintain a business in the nation's current health-care state. Are you looking for a step-by-step guide on how to start a house-call practice? Are you looking for a few examples from an expert in the fi eld of house calls to help guide your decision making? If you've answered yes to these questions, this is the book for you. Making medical house calls is an extremely rewarding and profi table niche practice that can be started with little or no overhead. If you already love or think you will love going into the home setting to provide primary care when health care is often scarce or unavailable, this is the fi eld for you. This book is written with nuances and scenarios of a house-call practice for an advanced practice nurse, but if you are a physician assistant, physician, or any other practitioner looking to begin a housecall practice, there is plenty of information here for you too!

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

The essential guide by one of America's leading doctors to how digital technology enables all of us to take charge of our health A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery. You'll make an appointment months in advance. You'll probably wait for several hours until you hear "the doctor will see you now"-but only for fifteen minutes! Then you'll wait even longer for lab tests, the results of which you'll likely never see, unless they indicate further (and more invasive) tests, most of which will probably prove unnecessary (much like physicals themselves). And your bill will be astronomical. In The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, one of the nation's top physicians, shows why medicine does not have to be that way. Instead, you could use your smartphone to get rapid test results from one drop of blood, monitor your vital signs both day and night, and use an artificially intelligent algorithm to receive a diagnosis without having to see a doctor, all at a small fraction of the cost imposed by our modern healthcare system. The change is powered by what Topol calls medicine's "Gutenberg moment." Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class, the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine, giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand, we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which "doctor knows best." Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks, citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine, and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive, open, online medicine, where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles, will enable real-time, real-world research on massive populations. There's no doubt the path forward will be complicated: the medical establishment will resist these changes, and digitized medicine inevitably raises serious issues surrounding privacy. Nevertheless, the result-better, cheaper, and more human health care-will be worth it. Provocative and engrossing, The Patient Will See You Now is essential reading for anyone who thinks they deserve better health care. That is, for all of us.

Includes information on Mary Beard, black nurses, blacks, Boston (Massachusetts), Charleston (South Carolina), homecare, Ladies Benevolent Society, race, nursing salaries, tuberculosis, visiting nurse associations, etc.

Jack, an alcoholic, had a near-death experience. He didn't share the details, but it shook him up. He did all he could to make amends...Two years later, he had another near-death experience - this time blissful! "Nearly every week, I encounter someone who has had an out-of-body experience," Dr. Jim Roach says. "It can be during childbirth, sexual assault, near-death or spontaneous." But what this teaches us is exceedingly important in understanding who we are and where we are headed. In God's House Calls, Dr. Roach shares patient stories that reflect creativeness from another dimension, stories that by themselves, or from unsavory characters, would be unbelievable. But these stories, from those you would want as your best friend, are incredibly moving. Together, they proclaim a fantastic message - and beg the question: Are we listening? Jack Canfield, multiple #1 NY Times best-selling author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, said about Dr. Roach: "You have this amazing amount of knowledge...you are one of the most encyclopedic minds I have ever met...They should take your brain and put it in the Smithsonian if and when you ever die...I think if you don't take advantage of him it is like someone saying here is a map, all you have to do is go and take away truckloads of gold, all you have to do is get in a truck and drive over there, and there is no reason to be suffering from anything right now if you have access to this guy right here...I literally can't talk highly enough about how much I think you are really doing good stuff in the world." Visit GodsHouseCalls.com for more information