MODELS OF AMBULATORY CARE zyxwv 00954543 /96 zyx $0.00 + .20 A HOUSE CALL PROGRAM AS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF PRIMARY CARE TRAINING Robert L. Perkel, MD, Vincent M. B. Silenzio, MPH, MD, and Marie Z. Kairys, MD Calls to patients in their homes are an indispensable part of the phys- ician’s armamentarium. Despite the stunning decline in the frequency of house calls by physicians during the 20th century, such activities have generally been accepted as valuable and desirable by physicians and con- tinue to be a feature of primary care practice. zyx As the economic basis of health care undergoes significant changes in the era of managed care, the future viability of home visits by medical practitioners similarly hangs in the balance. Under the aegis of a federal grant in 1981, a home visit pro- gram was begun by the Department of Family Medicine at Thomas Jef- ferson University.= Now in its 15th year of operation, the home visit pro- gram (HVP) remains an integral part of the family practice residency program and clinical practice at Thomas Jefferson University. Incorpo- rated into all zyxwvu 3 years of the residency curriculum, the HVP uses a com- prehensive team approach to the multitude of problems confronting a typically medically disenfranchised population. The program not only serves to provide home visit services to patients in need but also strives to train new physicians on how to incorporate such services into modern clinical practice. The primary care and geriatric literature have contained descriptions of a variety of house call zyxw programs.4,6,8,17,19,22,23 Despite the value and de- From the Department of Family Medicine, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (RLP); Department of Family Medicine, Univer- sity of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick (VMBS); and Department of Family Medicine, Cooper Hospital/Uni- versity Medical Center, Camden (MZK), New Jersey PRIMARY CARE VOLUME 23 *NUMBER 1 *MARCH 1996 47