Home Visits

Home Visits Eligibility

Home Visits are reserved for the following groups of patients:

• Terminally ill
• Housebound
• Those who are severely ill and cannot be mobilised

Please remember the following when requesting a home visit:

• 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 if additional help is required.
• More tests and treatments are available at the surgery compared to home.
• In our experience home visits requests for children are almost always inappropriate, we would normally expect them to be brought in by their parent or guardian so they can be assessed and monitored with the full facilities available at the surgery. This can be often done much more quickly than a home visit therefore helping children get treatment more promptly.
• Home visits are time consuming for the doctors - several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit.
• 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 to bring you to the surgery.

How to request a home visit

Please request visits before 10am whenever possible as this allows our GP's to plan their workload accordingly. Late requests often lead to disruption of the appointment system, excessive waiting times for patients who have booked appointments and inconvenience for other patients.

What happens after you have requested a home visit.

A doctor will call you back on most occasions to assess your problem. This is to enable the doctor to assess the need for the visit and to determine if a more appropriate course of action is required. 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 hospital attendance. It also prepares the doctor to collect some information required as necessary for the visit. You may still be asked to come to the surgery, where you will be seen as soon as possible. No patient in clinical need of a home visit will be refused one.