A living dinosaur in Florida

Not quite but the next closest thing. A doctor who makes house calls.

Dr. Andrew Oakes-Lottridge is a throwback to the past.

With a small black bag and a mobile office, he travels Southwest Florida, dispatching care to patients within their homes or offices.

He didn't always work this way. "I got board certified in family medicine," said Oakes-Lottridge. "I worked for a large, multispecialty group in Cape Coral for a little over a year, but I wasn't happy doing that. It was a good practice, but there just wasn't enough time with patients. It was too hard for patients to get in to see the doctor. It was too hard for them to get a doctor on the telephone. It was all too impersonal."

During a house call, Dr. Andrew Oakes-Lottridge writes up notes and observations of a well-baby checkup on 1-week-old Aliya Molina at her home in Cape Coral.
So, like his father before him, Oakes-Lottridge, 36, decided to open his own practice and make house calls.

As a teenager, Oakes-Lottridge would go on calls with his father on weekends.

I can never recall a doctor making a house call in my lifetime. My year of birth is 1961. Doctors doing such in The Philippines where my wife was born are still around but getting less common.

While her mother, Graciela Briones, 19, watches, Dr. Andrew Oakes-Lottridge wraps up 1-week-old Aliya Molina at the end of a checkup at their home in Cape Coral.

"He would pay me $1 per house call," Oakes-Lottridge said. "We'd see about 20 patients. I'd carry his bag and take notes for him. Back then, $20 was a lot of money for a day."

On a recent morning, he drove to a north Cape Coral home for a one-week checkup on newborn Aliya Molina.

"How is the breast-feeding going?" Oakes-Lottridge asked Aliya's mother, Graciela Briones, 19. "Is she feeding on both sides? How often is she feeding? As she starts demanding more, you'll start producing more."

Sitting in Brione's living room, Oakes-Lottridge asked how Aliya was sleeping, talked about cleaning the belly button area and answered an array of questions. A small portable scale sat on Brione's coffee table, which Oakes-Lottridge used to see if Aliya was gaining or losing weight.

"I clean her around here," Briones said, pointing to the belly button area. "I didn't want to hurt her, though."

Oakes-Lottridge assured the new mother, who had two previous miscarriages and was a bit anxious about caring for the newborn, that cleaning the area would not hurt Aliya.

*****

Sometimes Oakes-Lottridge finds himself delivering news that other doctors have been reluctant to tell patients.

"I had a lady who had lung cancer," he said. "She was admitted to the hospital. She was angry because she couldn't get a straight answer from anyone. No one wanted to tell her she had a 15 percent chance of living. Once I took over her care, I think I spoke with her or someone in her family every day if not twice a day until she passed."

During an average week, Oakes-Lottridge sees 15 to 30 patients.

Because most insurance companies do not cover house calls, Oakes-Lottridge is typically considered out-of-network. His services are not covered by Medicare, either.

"I know I am not the most economic service out there," he said.

I'm sure it isn't but I commend the doctor. There are some services considered out of date or old fashioned. Are we really a better world or country without them?

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