MEDICAL HOME PROVIDES SPECIALIZED AND CUSTOMIZED HOME HEALTHCARE

The idea came from two people from Santa Maria da Feira, João Bragança and Miguel Branco, and consists in meeting the needs of the health user without him/her leaving the house. The objective is to make Medical Home's service as more personalized as possible. With ambulance teams and the respective subcontracted medical staff, according to the geographical location of the requests, the next step will be to provide an application for mobile devices, so that the user's family can monitor, in real time, the treatment or service requested.

João Bragança, a nurse, and Miguel Branco, a civil engineer, are friends for a long time. From Santa Maria da Feira, they grew up together and, less than a year ago, fate brought them back together, now in a professional environment. It all began in October 2018, although Medical Home had begun to fully function only at the beginning of this year.

"There is a gap in the Municipality and we moved forward with the project after we had made a study. Since then, the idea has been consolidating", explained Miguel Branco, completed by João Bragança. "We dealt with the legal issue, the constitution of the company, and then we had a break until December / January in order to discuss how to consolidate the project. In January, we started to plan and implement the ideas we had and we had been building a structuring plan and marketing". After that, Medical Home was formed, an exclusively home based "healthcare provider" company. "We have all the clinical skills, but at the clients' home. This is the great advantage of the service. Any citizen, and he/she doesn't need to be sick, but who needs health care or the provision of healthcare services, can do it on their home by contacting Medical Home "which works "365 days a year".

The range of services is, despite the company's short time of existence, already vast. "We have specific cleaning services, from a simple  home cleaning to a more thoroughly cleaned one, because the patient can be immunosuppressed or have asthma or chronic bronchitis", explains João Bragança. "There is also home delivery meals. It may be basic, as specific, taking into attention patient problems, such as renal insufficiency, liver, heart failure, or because he/she is diabetic. All diets are controlled by our dietitians and nutritionists". The rental and sale of clinical devices, such as care beds or wheelchairs, are also part of the range of services provided by the company from Fornos.

Miguel Branco and João Bragança are considering to reinforce the valences of Medical Home. "We are structuring a service, which will be inaugurated soon, which is the matter of video surveillance. We are requested, especially by migrants who have family members in need of monitoring. Soon, they will be able to access, via their smartphone, a camera at home and visualize, in direct and with sound, our teams taking care of their relatives".

Therefore, Medical Home compromises itself, upon request, to provide "temporary or permanent pediatric follow-up" and also "physical therapy at home". But whatever service is required, the administrators guarantee to do a preliminary study of each case. "It is a highly personalized service. We go to the customers’ home to do a study on their needs, we propose what can be useful and the customer, in the end, and by analyzing and budget, decide which services they want". The transport of users is subcontracted. "We have ambulance teams that work with Medical Home - and in the future we expect to have ours - which are subcontractors companies. They transport clients, either for an exam or a medical consultation", explains João Bragança, emphasized by Miguel Branco. "It is an individualized service in which the client goes only with the assistant and the crew".

"Everything is adjustable to the needs"

Versatility is a point in favor of Medical Home. "We serve middle-aged people who don't want to go to a hospital for a subcutaneous injection, preferring to be a company professional to do it at their home. We are predisposed to do the service anytime, at the client's home, according to their needs. We have a fellowship of collaborators composed by doctors, nurses and medical assistants and geriatric that allows us to work at home”, explains Miguel Branco, ensuring that the Speech Therapy service is "fully reimbursed". 

The services of the company from Santa Maria da Feira are mostly requested in the north of Aveiro district. "At the moment, the requests range from Vale de Cambra to Ovar, passing by S. João da Madeira, Oliveira de Azeméis, Santa Maria da Feira, Cesar, Fajões or Vila de Cucujães, that is, in a geographical range between the north of Aveiro and Porto", says João Bragança. And in these places are served health users with the most varied setbacks. "We have patients in permanent follow-up, as bedridden patients totally dependent. There are patients in the postoperative and convalescent at home and, occasionally, health users who due to complicated work schedules and who can’t go to public services for medication administration, they resort to Medical Home. There are people who, in the winter, don’t want to catch rain, cold or wind when they go to the health services and so they resort to our services, being treated in the domestic comfort. Summing up, everything is adjustable to the needs of each client".

Although the company is still in an embryonic stage, João Bragança and Miguel Branco have already begun efforts to form partnerships to increase the number of customers. Currently, there is an agreement with the Clinical Institute "which includes in its staff psychologists and speech therapists who provide services, from children to adults, fully reimbursed". "The teams of the Clinical Institute and those of Medical Home analyze the patient and, if clinically proven the need for therapy, the process begins, always exposed to public entities". But there is more. "Medical Home has already been formally presented to the Municipality at the City Hall, and we will now take the necessary steps, in partnership with the Social Security and the Social Services of the City Hall. The necessary contacts are being made in order to, although we are a private entity, provide a social service in partnership. There are many needs, social services can’t ensemble all of them and there will be situations in which we will be an asset", says João Bragança.

For João Bragança, "it is not surprising” the contacts received from cities like Lisbon or Marinha Grande, because Medical Home has already been contacted by Portuguese emigrants living in ''Germany, France and even Dubai”. Although, a national wide scope "needs a careful analysis”, taking into consideration that the service of the company from Santa Maria da Feira "is personalized". "When teams are attributed to a family, we don’t like to oscillate. They already know the routines and schedules of the health user and, in terms of safety and professional empathy, everything is easier. If the patient is from Vale de Cambra, the team we will provide will be from Vale de Cambra because the distances are shorter, which makes it easier to travel. The administrators guarantee to only hire "qualified professionals", being "the level of demand for care very high”. "These are private clients looking for a service at home, that is, we are talking about a high level of professionalism and seriousness. And we evaluate the procedures of our professionals on a daily base”. For better transparency, Miguel Branco reveals that it is being developed a mobile application that will enable tele-surveillance. "We often talk to families of the patients who are in other countries through applications like WhatsApp. With tele-surveillance, only the family member can download the application and have real-time access to follow the case, talk to the family member and even with the healthcare professional".