Health-Care Homework

Photograph by Michael Cunningham

Every Tuesday morning, Martha W. Jones leaves her office to go to work. A clinical pharmacist at the nonprofit Scotland Neck Family Medical Center, in North Carolina, Ms. Jones visits Halifax County residents in their homes, accompanied by a physician’s assistant, a nurse, and often a graduate student or two.

On these home visits, the medical professionals check the patients’ blood pressure and pulse and evaluate and prescribe medications, as well as check the batteries of smoke detectors and make sure the patients have someone to look after them regularly.

“We started the program because we had patients who had to come to the clinic by rescue squad because they could not walk to the car,” says Ms. Jones. “We are a small town in a rural area, and they just lived down the street. We said, Next time we will go there.”

Since the Home Visit Program started five years ago, it has served 125 people, ranging from a 29-year-old patient with cerebral palsy to a 101-year-old with high blood pressure. Staff members visit patients with a variety of ailments, including people recovering from stroke or suffering from severe arthritis, seeing six or eight each week, some of them several times a month and others every few months. The majority of patients are over age 75.

The medical center’s $1.5-million budget comes from foundations and the state government. Patients’ health insurance pays for many of the home visits, but if a person cannot pay, the center covers the cost of care.

Here, two medical staff members from the center visit one of their patients.