For Minor Medical Problems, Dial Front Desk : New physician services are aimed at vacationers. A doctor’s hotel visit can cost less than a trip to the emergency room.

A Seattle hotel executive and his family were thoroughly enjoying their visit here to see Disneyland until their preteen daughter complained of an earache. Her father called the concierge at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel, where they were staying, and was promptly referred to a Santa Ana-based company called House Call Physicians.

Within an hour, Dr. Peter Muran appeared at the hotel room door, dressed in a crisp white coat and toting a black bag. After diagnosing the problem as an ear infection, he prescribed antibiotics and saved the trip.

Nationwide, services such as House Call Physicians--a group of doctors that makes house calls to Southern California hotels--are growing, providing business and vacation travelers with alternatives to visiting the local emergency room, picking a doctor blindly from an unfamiliar phone book or hoping the hotel has an old-fashioned doctor-in-residence (most don’t). While hospital emergency rooms are clearly the only choice for certain symptoms, a variety of new companies and approaches to health care are making it easier for travelers to find quality medical treatment away from home.

In addition to doctor services such as House Call Physicians, the new array of options includes walk-in clinics on hotel grounds and membership services that refer the ill and injured to local doctors.

Such services are aimed at handling non-emergency conditions. Colds, influenza, ear infections, sunburn, bronchitis, urinary tract infections, sore throats, stomach problems and athletic injuries such as strains or sprains are common complaints treated. Another common use of the services is by travelers who leave prescription medicines at home and must have immediate replacements.

The care is usually speedy. Hotel physician services generally send a doctor within minutes or, at most, a couple of hours. This is fast, especially when compared with the wait in an emergency room, which can range from two to eight hours, according to Kate Perrin, spokeswoman for the American College of Emergency Physicians.

“It’s friendly medicine,” said Dr. Gresham Bayne, a San Diego emergency medicine physician who founded (800) CALL DOC seven years ago to offer house and hotel room calls.

Hotel guests often first hear of these services from front desk employees or concierges. Procedures vary, but those followed by HouseMed Inc./MediClinic, an Orlando, Fla.-based firm founded in 1984, are typical. A guest calls the front desk to seek medical attention and is referred to a HouseMed dispatcher, according to spokeswoman Debbie Swartwood. If a house call is deemed appropriate, the traveler is given an appointment time. “We try to shoot for one to two hours to have a doctor there,” said Swartwood, whose service (407-648-9234) obtains referrals from about 150 hotels in the Disney World area.

At clinics on hotel premises, guests often can just walk in. Five to 15 minutes is a typical wait at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach, said Midori Yamamoto, managing director of the hotel, where a service called Doctors On Call--in conjunction with a nearby hospital--leases medical clinic space. But when there’s an emergency, Yamamoto said, guests are taken to the affiliated hospital. Three other Oahu hotels offer the Doctors On Call service, Yamamoto said, including the Hyatt Regency, Outrigger Waikiki and Hawaiian Regent.

Also quick is the medical clinic at The Pointe Hilton Resort on South Mountain in Phoenix. It offers walk-in care as well as room service. It can transfer guests to hospital emergency rooms, if warranted, and arrange for the services of sports medicine physicians.

The Inn Care of America, Inc., physician referral service is almost as speedy. Members of the Tennessee-based network, founded in 1990 to hook up travelers with local doctors, call a toll-free number and explain their medical problem to the operator, who notifies the nearest network physician. The physician or a staff member contacts the traveler within 30 minutes. To be part of the network, individual members pay $24.95 annually and are offered access to 3,000 network physicians nationwide: (800) 933-4627.

Physicians who work for any of the above-mentioned travelers’ services are usually trained in family practice, internal medicine or emergency medicine. Some--although not all--are board-certified, indicating that they have met the qualifications of a medical specialty board by taking extended training and passing an exam.

Costs vary depending upon the service and the problem. Doctor fees at the clinic at Hilton Hawaiian Village, for example, are $50 and up. In a cost comparison of common diagnoses, House Call Physicians said their service fees were lower than those charged by a hospital emergency department. Treatment for a urinary tract infection, for example, averaged $125 with House Call Physicians but $290 at a nearby emergency room.

The downside: Fees charged by hotel physicians and clinics might not be reimbursed by insurance. At HouseMed, for example, only special “travel assistance” insurance, purchased as a supplement to traditional health insurance, is accepted, Swartwood said. But at The Pointe, Austin said workers at the sports medicine clinic sometimes bill insurance directly; sometimes, though, payment is required when services are rendered.