Home Visits

If you are too frail or too ill to attend the surgery you may ask for a home visit by telephoning before 10.00 am.  Your doctor may phone to discuss your request and may offer advice rather than visit, if this is appropriate.  In the case of a medical emergency, you may contact the surgery at any time.
 
GP home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:
  • those who are terminally ill
  • those who are housebound, for whom travel to premises by car would cause deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.
Please remember that a Doctor can typically see up to 6 patients in the time it takes to make one house call. Patients can be examined more thoroughly in the surgery so please keep house calls for urgentmatters only. It is not the best use of a GP’s time in the following cases:
  • common symptoms of childhood fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most case of abdominal pain.  These patients are usually well enough to travel by car.  If you have no transport and a child is not fit to walk or travel by bus then please arrange appropriate transport from friends, relatives or taxi firms.  We cannot arrange transport for you.
  • adults with commons problems, such as a cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transportable by car to a doctor’s premises.