Stashed away in the rather laid back and calm suburb of Naalya on the outskirts of Kampala city is a specialist home care service start up company incorporated on April 4th 2021 that is promising to turn the home based health care services sub sector on its head.
How did it Start?
Julius Habumugisha the founder and CEO of the company has a background in the medical and health subsector and as far back as 2019 was already seeing the glaring gaps in the provision of quality post hospital and treatment and care.
By the time of the Covid 19 breakout in 2020 as more and more patients were diagnosed with Covid, hospitals were overwhelmed with in patients and for those not in critical condition, home based care was recommended. This came with many needing oxygen cylinders to get delivered to their homes and also have nurses assist them effectively put on the oxygen masks and manage the disease. Teamwork Home care rode on this and other home health care needs to establish itself as a reliable service provider of home based medical care.
“As some one in the medical field, I had worked with a number of patients as part of my day job and I realized many who would get treatment from the hospital and be declared fit enough to go home where they were expected to fully recover would at times deteriorate or relapse when they get home due to lack of effective home care nursing” Habumugisha says.
The badly affected patients ranged from those in need of post surgery care, post delivery care, elderly care, end of life or what we call palliative care among other services that were not effectively being delivered to patients so we decided to come in and fill the gap providing quality home care and medical assistance services for those that need these services at home.
How does it work?
It begins with a patient or some one on behalf of the one who needs the care reaching out to us through our phone contacts that are available 24 hours, physically at our offices in Naalya estates Golden Apartments or through our website www.teamworkhomecare.com.
You book an appointment, a member of our team comes to your location, a complete assessment ( full body check up) of the patient or elderly person is done and then a treatment plan or way forward is laid out by a Doctor.
It's based on the medical report that we work out a treatment or management plan of the patient whether it involves a physio, a Counselor, nutritionist, bed side nurse etc, sign a contract laying out the plan and financial implications to the client, a deposit is done and the team commences managing the patient.
Expansion and Consolidation
Although still far from where they want to be Teamwork Homecare is miles away progressively from where it started. By the middle of 2021 as demand for the services of the company started to pick up they had to expand from providing home care nurses and delivering oxygen cylinders to patients homes.
Consequently they took on four physicians and one resident specialist to help them attend to patients better. Among the specialists they had to outsource was a paediatrician, a Kidney specialist, gynaecologist, neurosurgeon, cardiologist and neurologist to mention but a few.
The numbers of nurses on their books has also grown significantly to 50 although most of them are temporary only coming in when there is need, same is the case with the Doctors who Habumugisha says now total to 12 plus 15 Specialists who also work with them on a part time basis.
With those numbers on their books available to meet the specific needs and challenges of diverse patients, Habumugisha says they can effectively handle most cases including emergencies that may happen at home or in workplaces and require on site first aid treatment before referral to an established hospital.
When contacting Teamwork Homecare during day either through telephone or email, immediate response is guaranteed however after working hours Habumugisha says they do respond within 15 minutes from the time you contact them.
Why are Homecare nurses critical?
Many patients especially the elderly prefer the privacy, comfort and convenience their homes offer them so they prefer being treated from there.
And incases where they have no family members readily available to support and be by the patient’s side, home care nurses come in handy.
Effectively administering post admission care can also be challenging for non medical care givers for example where a patient still requires some intravenous treatment, specialized feeding as recommended by the patient’s Doctor and maintaining adequate hygiene standards for effective healing. All these call for having a trained bed side nurse or other specialists to ensure full quick recovery.
Incases where the would be care giver is in full time employment and can’t be available either during the day or night, a Homecare nurse can fill in effectively.
Challenges
With many of our communities having health challenges, Teamwork Homecare has done outreaches often on monthly basis and given free treatment and consultation to community members. They have done these in places like Ntinda, Kyambogo and others.
However in these outreaches they have also discovered that many people have challenges accessing medicines due to prohibitive costs and therefore urge those who can support them to help more people access home care medication to reach out.
There is also still limited knowledge on the value of their services and for this they are doing radio show outreaches first on Radio Muhabura with plans to do the same on there stations ad well.
Future plans
An application to integrate all their services and make them just a single click away is in the works, all aimed at simplifying and increasing access for patients.
Under development, is also an advanced feature on Teamwork Homecare’s website where one’s medical records will be stored and tracked or accessed by them remotely for example if they have a hospital appointment and forget their documents, they can access all records through the site with privacy settings embedded to ensure no one else has access to this data minus the owners permission.
Plans are under way to set up remote branches of Teamwork Homecare services in rural areas to serve the rural populations wit less access to good medical care effectively.
What does one need to fulfill before treatment?
A patient needs to give the team at Teamwork Homecare their full names, the condition they have must be diagnosed, a contract offer is then signed with us, assessment of the patient is done and they choose preference of a nurse or care giver who understands their language.
Basic consultation packages start from 20,000 Ugx and above with the various packages of services and costs laid out on the company’s website. On Monday at 10:00am only they do offer free tele consultation but a fee is charges at all other times.
To date Habumugisha says they have handled over 400 cases and are looking forward to treating many more through their homecare model.
Email: [email protected]
WhatsApp: +256701133509