The purpose of a healthcare team is to bring together all the skills necessary to treat the whole patient. The registered dietician (RD) is an integral part of the South Carolina & Georgia House Calls (SC & GA HC) team. Primary care providers are influencers of patient behavior, and the dietary habits of their patients are often contributing factors in failing to achieve recommended healthcare goals. Having the resource of a dietary specialist who can educate and work with individual patients is a significant asset. A patient working with an RD gains the knowledge necessary to improve nutritional skills. Those skills are directly related to better clinical outcomes and reduced costs associated with time saved managing symptoms.
SC & GA HC has three full-time RDs on staff, and in addition to assisting the day-to-day needs of the front-line providers, they are also a part of the comprehensive diabetic specialty pod. The RDs provide nutrition diagnosis and therapeutic counseling services through medical and nutritional therapy to help manage diabetes. Each pod medical professional has extensive experience treating and controlling diabetes and its related symptoms. Specialized nutritional knowledge plays a critical role in the team-based initiative.
Other areas where an RD is utilized include assisting with implementing elimination diets. (The elimination diet omits certain food groups that might be causing adverse reactions in the patient.) RDs also help providers by counseling and supporting their morbidly obese patients. (A morbidly obese patient is identified as someone that is 80 to 100 pounds above ideal body weight.) These patients are at a significantly increased risk for multiple diseases, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and gallbladder disease.
SC House Calls & GA House Calls is a network of over 250 medical professionals providing In-home medical house calls and Telehealth visits to Private Residences, Assisted Living Communities, and Skilled Nursing Facilities. SC House Calls serves all 46 Counties of South Carolina. New patient registration, appointments, and 24-7 access to medical professionals are available through its Center for Telehealth @ 800-491-0909
