Patients are requested, where possible, to telephone before 11am if a home visit is required that day.
We would request that, apart from the genuinely housebound, all other patients attend the surgery rather than request a home visit because of the extra time home visiting takes. On average four to five patients can be seen in surgery in the time it takes to do a single house call. In addition, the care that can be offered due to the lack of adequate lighting, examination facilities and equipment means that you may not receive as good a service as the doctor may be able to offer if you came to the surgery.
Please note that the doctor may telephone you rather than visit you if this is medically appropriate. Ultimately it is the doctors right to decide whether or not a visit is appropriate for a particular set of circumstances.
When is a home visit necessary?
GP visit is not usual
In most of these cases a visit would not be an appropriate use of your GP's time or best for you:
- Heart Attack - severe chest pain. The best approach is to call an emergency ambulance.
- Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea & vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel to the surgery. It is not harmful to take a child with fever outside.
- Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, general malaise, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the doctor's surgery.
GP visit may be useful
Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP's visit.
GP visit recommended
Home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving medical opinion, in cases involving:
- The terminally ill.
- The truly housebound patient for whom travel to premises would cause deterioration in their medical condition.
