Home Visits

Patients whose illness prevents them from attending the surgery can be visited in their own homes. Requests for home visits should preferably be made before 10 a.m.

Please be ready to give the receptionist your name, address, telephone number, age and brief details of what is wrong.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a community nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

Home Visit Policy

GP home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving -

The terminally ill.

The truly house bound patient for whom travel to the premises by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.

GP visit may be usual

After initial assessment over the phone, a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP's attendance to prepare them to travel to hospital - this is where a GP's other commitments do not prevent them arriving before the ambulance. Examples of such situations are 

• Heart attack
• Severe Shortness of breath
• Severe haemorrhage

It must be understood that if a GP is about to embark on a booked surgery of patients or is attending to another emergency and is told one of their patients is suffering from symptoms suggesting a heart attack or stroke, the nationally recommended approach is to call an emergency paramedical ambulance rather than attending.

A GP visit is not usual

In most cases  to visit would not be an appropriate use of GP's time.

Common symptoms of childhood fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These children are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside. Although the child may not be fit enough to walk or travel by bus, they can be transported by car or taxi. It is not the Doctors duty or their staff to arrange or pay for transport.

Adults with common problems such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transported by car to the Doctors premises.

Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise would also be best treated by having a consultation at the Doctors surgery where the facilities are available for a full examination and investigations. The exception would be the truly bed-bound patient.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the patients at the surgery in the time it takes for a GP to do a home visit.

We provide disabled car parking spaces, disabled access at the rear of our premises and a wheelchair is available to facilitate disabled patients attending the medical centre.