Home Visiting Guide

Home Visiting

HOW DO I OBTAIN A HOME VISIT ?

Home visits can be made for patients who are too unwell to get to the surgery. Please remember several patients can be seen in surgery in the time it takes to do a home visit. The doctor also works more efficiently in the surgery, and has easy access to nursing help, emergency drugs, hospital communications and equipment that cannot be brought to your home. Doctors can be delayed starting routine surgeries if caught in busy traffic or have difficulty parking or finding your address.

Should you require a home visit due to being housebound or too ill to come to the surgery, please telephone (024) 7622 4640 (HARNALL LANE) OR (024) 7641 8841 (GREEN LANE) before 11.00am with full details.

A doctor may telephone you first and decide whether or not a visit is clinically appropriate. The doctor may agree to visit after morning surgery that day. It is not always possible to define an exact time for the visit - visiting is generally made between 12.30 - 3pm but sometimes anytime before 7pm at night. If the doctor has to visit after their evening surgery they usually ring to explain the delay and advise of an estimated time of arrival.

Urgent visits will always be dealt with immediately or more usually an Ambulance called to your home.

We are committed to giving the best possible care to our patients. In return we need help from you to ensure things run smoothly. The following home visiting guidelines will help us to safeguard your health:

Please treat the doctors and practice staff with courtesy and respect.
Please let us know if you change your name, address or telephone number or have a key coded entrance system.
Please do not ask for home visits if you have a relative or friend that could be asked to bring you to the surgery or if your problem is not urgent or you are not housebound when unwell. For example, not being housebound usually means you are physically able to walk a short distance to the shops or to public transportation which can take you to the shops.
Tell us as soon as possible if you do not need the home visit or have gone to A&E or called an Ambulance or decided you can make your way to the surgery.
Please avoid phoning after 11.00am in the morning asking for a home visit, although we appreciate that this is sometimes necessary and the Duty Doctor is usually able to plan a home visit for much later in the day.

Some myths about GP services (from NHS Direct):

Your doctor has to visit you at home.
FALSE

If a home visit is appropriate, the doctor or nurse will arrange it. Doctors decide whether or not to visit a patient at home, based on your medical need. Only patients who cannot reasonably come into the surgery are visited at home.

You will be seen more quickly if you ask for a home visit.
FALSE

During surgery hours, most doctors visit patients later in the day. It may be quicker for you to go into the surgery during normal surgery hours and out-of-hours. If you do the travelling, it means that the doctor can see more patients rather than spending time travelling themselves and delaying your consultation and other people’s.

In order to ensure that the best use is made of your GP services, please attend the surgery whenever possible.

If you need advice, you can contact NHS DIRECT on 0845 46 47

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 by car would cause deterioration in their medical condition.

-A GP visit may be useful following a conversation with a health professional, when it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient could be helped by a GP's visit.

A 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 especially in the case of:

Heart Attack - severe crushing chest pain. The best approach is to call an 999 - emergency paramedic ambulance.

Severe abdominal pain or blood loss. The best approach is to call 999 - an emergency paramedic ambulance.

Collapse or loss of consciousness. The best approach is to call 999 - an emergency paramedic ambulance.

Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of mild 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, insect bites, sore throat, flu, general malaise, mild back pain and mild abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the doctor's surgery. Transport arrangements are the responsibility of the patients or their carers not the surgery.