RECEIVE the care you need in the comfort of your own home with Comfy Home Medical Services, a mobile medical service company. Launched in 2022, this growing business has already entered over seven parishes, all under the leadership of a young medical practitioner, 28-year-old Dr Kirk Jones.

Armed with an MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) and fuelled by a passion for accessible health care, he embarked on an inspiring journey to “decentralise” medicine.

“It’s about bringing health care to you,” he passionately shared with the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

This ethos underscores the company’s commitment to a more accessible and personalised health-care experience. While home visits for medical care were not entirely novel, Dr Jones sought to redefine the practice, making it not just a commonplace occurrence among friends but a comprehensive and officially recognised business. Having started as a junior doctor within the public health system, Dr Jones quickly discerned the gaps in health-care delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the need for a solution as people were hesitant to leave their homes and hospitals became less accessible for non-urgent cases. To address this gap he envisioned a service that catered directly to patients’ homes. Comfy Home’s journey began in Montego Bay, St James, as an entirely mobile business, requiring an initial investment of $1.5 million. The focus in the first year remained on rapid COVID testing, especially for tourists who found it challenging to navigate testing facilities. In the early stages, Dr Jones was accompanied by one loyal nurse and a laboratory technician who personally attended to patients.

“I was going around, seeing all the patients, doing everything myself. I had one lab tech who was trained and certified in rapid COVID testing, and if patients needed follow-up, I did the follow-up,” he reminisced.

As the pandemic waned and the economy reopened, Comfy Home seamlessly pivoted back to its original purpose: bringing comprehensive medical services directly to the people. By the end of 2022 the company had expanded its offerings to include general visits, home medical consultations, physiotherapy, and intravenous (IV) vitamin therapy. Recognising the growing demand for reputable doctors to provide services at home, he expanded the team. The focus shifted to understanding and meeting the evolving needs of the clientele, leading to the introduction of family oriented monthly service packages. The expansion continued across seven parishes, with the addition of 13 travelling medical practitioners in each parish. August 2023 marked the launch in Kingston, solidifying the transition from a tourism-centric approach to reaching a broader clientele. The team now includes surgical nurses, curative nurses, and physiotherapists. Comfy Home’s commitment to holistic health care is evident in the recent onboarding of a neuroscientist, a rare expertise with only two such professionals in Jamaica.

“Typical people who have been calling us are elderly, who are at home, starting to develop all kinds of psychiatric conditions or sometimes even neurocognitive, meaning the way that they think, decision-making, starts going because you are home, you have a sickness dealing with,” Dr Jones explained to Sunday Finance. “The idea behind a neuropsychologist and not a regular psychiatric doctor is that they are very vulnerable people at this stage so probably medical treatment in terms of drugs may not be the best go-to but we find that by having a neuropsychologist involved, there’s much more training of the mind.”

Comfy Home Medical Services offers care for people recovering from surgeries or ongoing medical care for those with critical illnesses like Alzheimer’s and dementia. But its most popularly requested service is home medical consultations, which start at $20,000.

Although Dr Jones has been a practising medical doctor for more than five years, he acknowledges the challenges he faces in the medical field due to age biases. But, undeterred, he welcomes sceptics.

“Allow me to show them what I can do and most of them end up liking me,” he told Sunday Finance.

Comfy Home aspires to change how medicine is approached and aims to impact the Caribbean, with a bold vision to branch into medical tourism.

“We want when people come to the country, they come to use Comfy Home Medical Services,” Dr Jones declared ambitiously.