Who ya gonna call?

South Florida CEO, May, 2004

Remember the days when physicians would come to your home when you were ill? Probably not, since that quaint practice ended sometime in the mid 20th Century. Now a Bay Harbor-based company is out to bring those days back. "Emergency rooms are for life-threatening illnesses, but if you have bronchitis or food poisoning or an ear infection, you shouldn't be in the emergency room," says Dr. Ramsey Saffouri. His company--AM-PM House Calls--provides 24-hour emergency medical services, via doctors who make house calls. Saffouri, who started the company in 1997, says he got the idea after treating the elderly Frank Sinatra in his hotel suite. "That's when I realized there was a market niche in the hotel industry," he says. He soon expanded to NYC, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Chicago, and is adding Los Angeles and San Francisco this year. With 300 doctors on call in South Florida and 6,000 nationwide, the firm still focuses on hotel guests, but Saffouri's goal is make the service available to the general public. At $175 to $500 a visit, cash up front, that may be a problem, even if most insurance companies later reimburse patients for the visit. If you're cash positive, Call 888-AM-PM-DOC.

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