Home Visits

HOME VISIT REQUESTS

Home visits should only be requested for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability.  

Please remember that such visits are for medical purposes only and not for social or personal reasons.

We ask that all patients attend the surgery if you can. 

In the time that it takes to see one person at home, the doctor could see between two and four patients at the surgery. Wasting time on unnecessary home visits can delay someone else getting, sometimes life-saving, treatment that they may need.

If you are housebound or too unwell to attend the surgery and would like to request a home visit, please call before 10.30am, you will be assessed by a clinician.  Sometimes the problem can be dealt with by alternative arrangements or advice. 

If phoning after 10.30am, a visit will be arranged for the following day.  If deemed urgent and it is after 10.30am, please call the emergency services.

If the ANCP does not feel that a home visit is medically necessary, they may ask you to come to the surgery. This is because:

  • it may be possible to see you quicker at the surgery than if you were to wait at home for a visit.
  • there are better facilities for appropriate examinations and tests at the surgery.
  • it is much quicker for the doctors to see patients at the surgery, which means we can provide a better service to all our patients.

If you have requested a home visit and you are expecting the doctor to visit, please phone the practice reception again if no one has arrived before 15:00.