At your door 24/7

Last year, Iman Bar found herself unexpectedly on call.

The pediatrician, who operates a clinic on Costa Mesa's Westside, was at the birthday party of one of her children's friends when a boy fell in the back yard and suffered a nasty cut to his head. The family was ready to drive him to the hospital, but as fate would have it, Bar had her emergency kit in the car and mended the wound promptly.

From that moment came a business idea. Bar, who has seen patients at her Harbor Boulevard office since 2000, began making house calls shortly after the party — and a year later, she still has her phone on her 24/7, ready for a summons.

"I thought, 'I would like to serve my community by providing service in their homes, rather than have them wait in the ER,'" said Bar, a native Egyptian who moved to the United States in 1990.

Now, Bar's business, Newport Concierge Pediatrics, extends across a five-mile radius around her residence in Newport Beach. She only gets one or two calls in a typical week, but she's primed for almost any urgent care — including cuts, burns, bee stings, ear infections, and even advice on child care for nervous first-time parents.

Given her background, Bar isn't overwhelmed by much. She worked as a pediatrician in Egypt before crossing the Atlantic to earn her doctorate at Emory University in Georgia. At one point, she said, she treated the prince of Kuwait when the royal family fled to Egypt during the Gulf War in 1990.

The experience reminded Bar — who now lives in Corona del Mar — how all patients become alike in the doctor's office.

"He was a prince who, like anyone else, had an ear infection," she said.