If possible, please try to telephone reception before 10:00 if you think you require a home visit. You may only request a home visit if you are housebound or are too ill to visit the practice.

If you request a visit, you will be added to the telephone triage list and one of the on-call team will call you back to discuss your request.

Your GP will only visit you at home if they think your medical condition requires it and will also decide how urgently a visit is needed.

Necessary Visits

A doctor will always visit the following patients:

• Terminally ill patients
• House-bound patients – these are patients for whom attending surgery would have an affect on their health or cause severe discomfort.

Unnecessary Visits

In most cases a GP’s visit is not required. It is much better for the medical assessment to be done at the surgery which is fully equipped and where access to other members of the medical team including nurses and other doctors is available.

Children

Children with the following symptoms are usually strong enough to be brought to the surgery by car or public transport:

• Fever (it is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside)
• Coughs and Colds
• Earache
• Headache
• Vomiting and Diarrhoea
• Abdominal Pain
• Children experiencing these symptoms may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk, but car transport may be available from friends, relatives or by taxi. If a child is fit enough to come to the surgery, we ask that you make every effort to bring them.

Adults

Adults who experience the symptoms mentioned above, as well as back pain, are usually able to come to the surgery by car.

Elderly

Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise, are usually treated in surgery. Although, patients who are truly housebound can be visited.

Home visits are only for patients that cannot attend the surgery.

If you need to request a home visit, please call the surgery before 10:00. A member of the medical team may phone before the visit to confirm it is a problem that would not be better dealt with at the surgery. If the visit is not urgent or is not necessarily needed on that day please notify the receptionist when you call.

Emergencies

If you believe yourself or someone else to be seriously ill and need an urgent visit, a doctor will call you back to assess whether you can wait for the doctor to visit or if an emergency ambulance needs to be called, for example:

• Chest pains
• Shortness of breath
• Severe bleeding