For Ocracoke news, click here
By Connie Leinbach
Gail Covington, a family nurse practitioner who most recently helmed the Hatteras Village Medical Center, has set up a home health care business on Ocracoke and Hatteras.
Covington, an Ocracoke resident, will travel to anyone’s home or business for consultation and treatment with her newly formed Island Mobile Medical Care.
“I want to provide a reasonably-priced care,” she said on Friday. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t have insurance.”
She said there is a need for what she will provide, both on Hatteras and Ocracoke.
“We have a health center here that’s affordable (because it’s a federally subsidized health center),” she said, “but Hatteras has more limited services.”
In her new role, Covington will follow patients’ medical problems, treat illnesses, order tests and procedures, refer patients to other providers (if needed), give physicals and write prescriptions for your medications.
She will continue repairing cuts and fishhook injuries and perform sports physicals, mariner and captain’s license exams and DOT physicals (for CDL licenses).
She will be able to administer medications but will not be able to dispense them.
Covington’s job as medical provider of the Hatteras clinic ended Oct. 9 after the board of directors of that facility decided to close its doors.
Since then, Covington has been pondering her next move and decided to go this route at some of her patients’ request. See her open letter by clicking here.
“I have a lot of pre-existing patients who want me to follow them,” she said, and will travel as far as Avon to treat them.
As of now, she cannot file insurance claims. All patients will pay at the time of their visits and those with insurance will then receive the necessary information to file an insurance claim for reimbursement.
Covington will not be on-call 24/7, but anyone interested in continuing or in establishing care with her can call 252-996-0511 and leave a voice message with name and phone number for a call back.
Good for you! Hope this works out well. Great idea.
Comments are closed.