To the Editor:

Thank you for Dr. James Giovino's article, “House Calls: Taking the Practice to the Patient” [June 2000]. I'd finished it before I'd made it from my mailbox to my desk.

I recently opened a practice in a small town, and the article so closely matched my personal experience —right down to the picture of the patient's home and my own black bag — that it was almost eerie! Incidentally, the list of the bag's contents matched my own but excluded injectable medications (for the inevitable sick, elderly patient who stubbornly refuses hospitalization); an Ana-Kit, just in case; and a list of specific local pharmacies that deliver.

I hope that Dr. Giovino continues to train his residents to make house calls, just as I was trained, and I hope this lost art is rediscovered.