Home Visits are reserved for the following groups of patients:
- Terminally ill
- Housebound
- Patients who are severely ill and cannot be mobilised.
Although a traditional part of General Practice, home visits are time consuming. Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit. So please help us to help you and our other patients by visiting the surgery whenever possible.
We want to see as many patients as efficiently as possible and ensure patients receive optimal care. At the surgery your GP will have access to all your medical records, including those held on computer. This means safer prescribing and assessment. Facilities are better for examining and treating patients at the surgery and more staff are available. More tests and treatments are available at the surgery compared to home.
Transport/social problems – We cannot undertake home visits for reasons of convenience or lack of transport. We will be happy to provide you with details of local taxi firms. From experience, we are aware that relatives, neighbours or friends are often willing to help out.
Our responsibility to you is to resolve the medical problem you have and decide the appropriate method and place for assessments. Your responsibility is to take all the reasonable steps you are able to, to enable us to do that.
Please request visits before 11am whenever possible as this allows the Doctor to plan their day accordingly. Late requests often lead to disruption of the appointment system and excessive waiting times and inconvenience for other patients.
A doctor will call you back on most occasions to assess your problem. This is to enable the doctor to assess the visit need.
It may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance. It also prepares the doctor to collect some information required as necessary for the visit.
He/she may still ask you to come to the surgery, where you will be seen as soon as possible.
The doctors would like to stress that no patient in definite need of a home visit will be refused one.