CALABASAS, CA – Care Level Management, a California medical group that delivers healthcare in the home, thanks in part to today's new high-tech tools, is planning a large expansion in the fall.

Carol Devol, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for the group, said Care Level is in negotiations to bring its type of healthcare delivery to several new sites around the country. She declined to discuss the details until the deal is done.

Today, about 40 Care Level physicians work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Antonio, Phoenix, and in Tampa and Melbourne, Fla. By year's end, Care Level expects to employ more than 150 doctors in those four states.Care Level's Personal Visiting Physician Delivery System provides the sickest 5 percent of seniors and medically underserved populations with access to physicians in their homes around the clock.

Care Level's clients include some of the country's leading payers and providers. Among them are Aetna, Blue Cross of California, Cigna and Cedars-Sinai Health System.

The idea is to provide patients with the best of care at a fraction of the cost of traditional in-office visits.Care Level is the brainchild of founders Raouf Khalil, the company's CEO, and Henri Becker, MD, its chief medical officer.

Care Level physicians see six to eight patients in the home per day, spending from half-hour to an hour with each. They use their PDAs for real-time access to the patients' medical records.

The program has reduced hospital admissions by an average of 60 percent, resulting in an average net savings of 30 percent to managed care providers, she said.

The latest technology is making it possible, she said.

"We believe that advances in technology should not be used to distance ourselves physically from the very ill, but to bring us closer to them," said Joseph W. Spooner, MD, senior vice president of product development for Care Level.

The Adaptive Business Leaders recognized Care Level Manage– ment recently with an ABBY Award, given annually to healthcare and technology firms that exemplify innovative approaches to providing healthcare.

Mimi Grant, president of ABL, said Care Level embodies all the key qualities of out-of-the-box thinking.

"The bigger part of the healthcare dollar goes to those few people who are chronically ill," Grant said, "and Care Level has found a way to provide care that's better for the patient and better for the payer."

IT plays critical role in old-fashioned care

Care Level Management has found a house call is better and cheaper than a traditional doctor's office visit for some of the country's sickest patients.

Today's information technology has paved the way for the 21st century house call, says Carol Devol, Care Level's chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

The model could work without today's information technology, but Devol finds it hard to imagine.

From the GPS systems to help doctors locate their patients' homes to their cell phones and PDAs, the company's Web-based enterprise resource management system and its home-grown electronic record system, the latest technology is helping get the job done."I'm not saying it absolutely could not be done," she said, "but it would be much, much more difficult and more costly."