House calls by doctors are almost unheard of nowadays, but Dan Carlin is using technology to provide his clients with instant virtual access to a physician 24/7.
Carlin runs World Clinicin New London, which he founded in 1998 to offer global concierge telemedicine to patients where and when they need it. While six to seven years ago he mostly served wealthy globe-trotting individuals and families, his main clientele are now American business executives whose companies pay for the health of their key personnel to be monitored and attended to wherever they are located. Carlin and three full-time emergency-room-trained doctors work with 600 clients annually. Clients pay an annual membership fee for around-the-clock access. He also has eight consultants in specialty fields and 12 consultants who serve as back up physicians.
For corporate clients, membership costs $5,000 to $20,000 depending on the level and extent of services. “Very often these executives add their family. It’s convenient,” says Carlin, who splits his time between New York and New London. The cost for individuals and families vary widely based on the service. Services can include everything from basic telemedicine consultations, monitoring certain conditions, providing on-call service while clients are travelling or a doctor going out to a rural Montana ranch to train a client’s staff in field emergency medicine.
“We operate like the company doctor circa 1965. We’re probably the world’s most sophisticated primary care telemedicine practice. As primary care has become scarcer we find ourselves doing a lot more collecting and managing the patients’ medical records,” says Carlin, who was inspired to practice telemedicine while serving in the Navy as a young doctor on a ship and occasionally needed to call for medicalassistance. Business has grown 20 percent annually during the past five years.
All patients receive a personal prescription kit with basic emergency medicine as well as specific drugs related to individual health histories. Many of his patients are older and need close monitoring. For them, he provides equipment to monitor pulse and oxygen levels, a scale that transmits data through an iPhone, and blood pressure cuffs to monitor vital signs. By doing this, Carlin says he can detect slight variations, suggest changes to diet and lifestyle, and keep patients out of the hospital. His doctors provide a variety of services, including routine advice on coughs and sore throats, emergency consultations, referrals to specialists, identifying the best hospitals for treatment and sending medical records. “A lot of these people have busy lives and don’t take time to see the doctor,” he says.
For more information, visit www.worldclinic.com.
Current Issue - May 2024