House Calls

Abstract

Meyer and Gibbons (Dec. 18 issue)¹ overstate the house call's fragile condition. In 1996, the Health Care Financing Administration reported charges for 1.6 million house calls. The numbers were essentially the same in 1994 and 1995, well above the 1.1 million the authors extrapolated for 1993. Bayne's² 1988 statistic (1.6 million) cited actual Medicare billings. Though we still need far more house calls, the reported 31 percent drop appears to be an artifact of method.