Home Doctors Uganda was incorporated in May, 2017 and we have since made 6 months in operation during which we conducted 56 home health visits,28 health education sessions and 6 community medical outreaches. We are basically involved in home health care where individual persons make bookings with us as well as health education and community medical outreaches where we work through partnerships with medical partners, schools, private companies and places of worship for better provision of health services to the people.
Home health care is still a new concept in the country and region at large, we therefore needed time to have people believe and understand that health services could be provided outside the hospital building. However as the lead doctor, I participate in health talk shows on radio and Television and also get interviewed on various newspaper health topics.
People mainly get to know about the services we provide, through word of mouth and referrals from our clients after which bookings are made through telephone calls via our hot-line +256702740407 or Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/homedoctorsug/. We intend to increase the bookings that come in physically at our office premises as well as through our website https://www.homedoctorsug.com/ which has an option of clients booking doctor appointments online. We also hope to incorporate into our work, mobile applications, Skype and Whatsapp calling platforms in addition to other tech innovations such as wearable medical devices and mobile ultrasound scans among others.
We hold capacity building seminars for health personnel through which we seek to give feedback to health workers about the issues as raised by patients or identified in the community, and therefore seek to better patient care and dissemination of information to patients. We also avail empowerment programs which seek to equip health workers with knowledge and skills to engage into other income generating projects and therefore supplement their meagre salaries. We also hope to provide opportunities for young people to innovate for health and eventually seek to support them to grow their ideas and initiatives.
A home health visit usually lasts a minimum of 1 hour and this has been found to be sufficient for the doctor and patient to develop a relationship which enables ample discussion of symptoms, examination findings, past medical history and laboratory/radiological investigations as well as treatment.