One snowy January day, Dr. Richard Skaroff set off for what is usually a 5- minute drive to Florence Lapin's house. But with the snow falling so steadily, the travel time was tripled.
That, not the slippery roads or poor visibility, seemed to bother Skaroff. He had a particularly important mission to complete.
Lapin, 73, had just spent the last month and a half in the hospital, recovering from a fractured elbow, a subsequent heart attack and then the dislocation of the injured elbow.
As Skaroff eased into the driveway of her neat two-story brick house in the Northeast, he could see a faint figure sitting behind the sheer curtains at the bay window in front. It was Lapin, staked out in the large cushioned chair where she always waits for him.
"Hello, Florence, how are you doing today?" Skaroff asked when he arrived. He drew a tepid response. "You're looking good today," he said.
Lapin, who suffers from heart disease and obesity, among other things, was gracious but disbelieving. "Oh, I love you for it (the remark), but you know that's not true," she said.
"He's such a doll," she said to a visitor.
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In the days of modern medicine, Skaroff, who has an office in Bustleton, might be considered an anachronism. He is a physician who provides regular home care to people who cannot get to the doctor's office.
There do not appear to be any official figures on how many doctors still make house calls in the Philadelphia area or nationwide. Local and national medical societies and professional organizations do not keep such statistics.
But from interviews with several physicians in the Northeast and other medical professionals, it seems that few doctors are taking their tools to the home.
"Physicians in practice spend much less of their professional time making house calls than they did 10, 20 or 30 years ago," said Lisa Wallenstein, the associate chairwoman of the department of medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Northern Division.
Wallenstein said a lack of time was probably one of the biggest factors in the shift away from house calls, followed by improved medical technology in the office and a growth in visiting-nurse services.
David A. McKeighan, director of the Delaware County Medical Society in Springfield, said: "What I see is a recognition that few physicians . . . are doing this."
But he added that he had noticed a slight movement back to house calls, as a supplemental form of health care, especially for the aging population.
