The recent COVID-19 virus has been spreading quickly, and it is only expected to get worse over the next few weeks. We have our virtual offices, our color-coded homeschool schedules, we practice social distancing, we wash our hands while singing “Happy Birthday” twice… but what if we (or our kids) start to feel sick?

One sick kid means you need to figure out childcare for the other kids, or drag them along to urgent care or the pediatrician’s office too. Do we go out and risk getting our families infected—and infecting others? How do we even know if it’s coronavirus and not just a common cold or flu? There is so much anxiety in trying to make the best choices for our families and communities right now.

“People are a little scared. Most public places are being shut down and people are being told to stay home, but then when people are feeling sick or symptomatic, those people are told to go to the doctor or urgent care,” Joseph Kitonga of Vitable Health relates. “This crisis weighs heavily on us and we feel that it is our duty to try our best to help.”

To that end, Vitable Health has lowered their house call fee from $79 to $50 per visit, and reduced membership fees by 50 percent to make in-home on-demand healthcare more accessible. Whereas membership previously took a week to take effect before you could avail yourself of Vitable’s services, they have also decided to remove that waiting period, and are accepting new members for care the same day they join.

Vitable will send a Board-Certified Nurse Practitioner to you, from 9 am to 10 pm, 7 days per week. In the comfort of your own home, they can evaluate your symptoms and come up with a treatment plan; and they can even write prescriptions when medically appropriate. If you meet the standards to qualify for COVID-19 test, practitioners can take your sample at home, bring it to a lab partner, and will have results back to you within two or three days.

And if something more common like a cold, strep throat, or the flu is suspected, they can do on-the-spot testing to get you results (and peace of mind) right away. Health insurance is not required for home visits, though may be needed for recommended lab tests or medications.

Last year, Vitable Health began to disrupt the system by bringing urgent care in-home to the Main Line (and Philadelphia). Since then, they have been an incredible resource for families, providing individualized, high-quality care for a wide range of non-emergency conditions on adults and children ages 18 months and up. They tell us that their calls have doubled in the past week, as fear over coronavirus has spread, and they have risen to meet the challenge and do their part to help keep people safe:

“This crisis is quite scary for a lot of people and we believe that Vitable can make a meaningful impact in helping slow down the spread of both the flu and the COVID-19 virus by preventing symptomatic people from going to urgent care or ER waiting rooms thereby infecting more people.”

To set up an appointment, call 484-416-0769 or sign up on their website: vitablehealth.com

Vitable Health supports the Main Line Parent Community.