If you need to request a home visit please call the surgery before 10.00am. A member of the medical team may phone before the visit to confirm that 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.
Home visits are only for patients that cannot attend the surgery. For further information please see the guidelines below.
At Parsons Heath Medical Practice we are dedicated to giving our patients the help and advice they need when they are ill. While we prefer our patients to come to surgery we know that this is not always possible and a visit to your home may be required.
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.
If you believe a patient is seriously ill and needs an urgent visit, a doctor will call you back to assess whether the patient can wait for the doctor to visit or if an emergency ambulance needs to be called.
Examples of these situations are
Chest Pain
Shortness of breath
Severe bleeding
In most cases a GPs 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.
The following illness do not usually require a home visit.
Children with the following symptoms are usually strong enough to travel to surgery by car:
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 surgery, we ask that you make every effort to bring them.
Adults who experience the symptoms mentioned above, as well as back pain, are usually able to come to surgery by car.
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.
A home visit to those who do not necessarily require it is a waste of a GP's valuable time. In the time taken for the average home visit 4 patients are seen at the surgery.
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