Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Bio
Simply stated, Dr. Taavoni is the Triangle’s most outstanding clinician. Featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and interviewed extensively on radio and television, she has been lauded for providing outstanding care to the community’s most complex patients, and for creating what is now the nation’s largest practice dedicated to physician home visits: Doctors Making Housecalls.
Driven by Dr. Taavoni’s leadership, Doctors Making Housecalls has grown from a 2-physician practice in the summer of 2002, to a multispecialty group of 21 physicians making 35,000 visits a year to homes and businesses throughout the Triangle.
A pioneer in “recreating” housecalls as a 21st century phenomenon, Dr. Taavoni’s vision of home-based primary care (HBPC) is being duplicated around the country, including in many top academic centers. The practice artfully blends cutting-edge technology with personal, patient-centered care, to bring “the best medicine has to offer” into the most convenient, comfortable locations. The net effect is better care and lower cost for both patients and communities.
Dr. T (as she likes to be called) highlights how Doctors Making Housecalls “transforms” the delivery of care for a wide range of patients, from busy “on-the-go” executives to complex patients for whom leaving home is an ordeal. “When it’s tough to connect with a physician, people tend not to go, often until it’s too late,” she point out. “Before we came on the scene, our patients lurched from crisis to crisis, often winding up in the emergency room or hospital.”
“We change all that by improving access to care,” she explains. “Our practice allows both physician and patient to adopt a proactive, prevention-oriented approach that’s simply not possible in an office-based practice. That translates to happier patients and better outcomes.”
Dr. Taavoni insists that care provided in the patient’s home or place of business is much better than care provided in any other venue. “For many reasons, we can provide much better care to patients when we see them in their own environment,” she says. “Patients are much more comfortable in their own environment, so they open up to us and convey information that can be crucial to caring from them effectively and humanistically.”
“By the same token,” she continues, “our physicians can take whatever time they need to get to know patients as people, and evaluate the physical and social context within which they function. That, too, leads to more accurate diagnoses and more effective treatment plans.”
Working with people in their own environment also makes it feasible for us to interact extensively with their family. We can provide the guidance family caregivers need to properly support their loved ones — and take better care of themselves.”
Specialty
Complex Patients (multiple clinical disciplines)
Education
1986 – St. Georges University – M.D.
1982 – George Washington University – B.S., Medical Technology
Residency
1989 – University of Hawaii Hospitals – Residency
1988 – Greater Baltimore Medical Center — John Hopkin’s Hospitals – Residency
1987 – Greater Baltimore Medical Center — John Hopkin’s Hospitals – Internship
Fellowships
1991 – University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill – Rheumatology
1990 – University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill – UNC-KRON Scholars Program
Board Certification
1989 – Internal Medicine (perpetual)
