The elderly demographic is the fastest growing segment of our population and its rate of growth will only increase in the coming years as more of the “baby boomers” reach retirement age. These seniors all desire to maintain their independence as long as possible. The technological advances in medicine offered by MCA along with increased Medicare reimbursement rates for qualified home care patients make this desire a reality.

Until MCA was established in the Kansas City area, seniors in need of preventative health care had three choices when fulfilling their healthcare needs: (1) arrange to see their physician at the physician’s office and schedule their own travel to and from that office; (2) receive periodic visits in their residence in the rare instance they were fortunate enough to have a physician with sufficient flexibility who could leave an office practice to see them in their residence, or; (3) forego preventative or episodic care and treatment altogether.

None of these alternatives provided for a workable long-term solution to seniors’

healthcare needs. Either seniors are burdened with long hours waiting for public transportation, or their families are burdened with interrupting their daily activities to provide transportation. The office based physician is also burdened with leaving a busy office practice to travel across town to visit one patient in their home. All too often, seniors, not wanting to be a burden, forego treatment, thereby lessening the quality of their life, driving up medical costs, and hastening entry into more dependent living arrangements.

MCA affiliated physicians provide a workable long term solution to this situation. MCA encourages its affiliated physicians to become active in the communities in which they practice by, among other things, conducting senior awareness presentations and health clinics organized and sponsored by MCA. MCA affiliated physicians, by using the resources and knowledge of MCA, provide preventative health care to qualified patients in their own homes. Utilization of the MCA model truly means no one in our communities, including the physician, the patients, or the patients’ families, must sacrifice when providing or receiving necessary preventative medicine.