Home Visits

 

Patient Information

As the Doctors time is at a premium, home visits are reserved for the following groups of patients:

  • Housebound
  • Terminally ill
  • Elderly/frail

We have developed a definition of housebound to encourage people, who are able, to attend clinics for their appointments and to limit the use of home visits.

Our agreed definition of housebound guidelines aims to ensure that GP clinical teams are providing clinical appointments in the home setting only when it is appropriate. It is acknowledged that an individual’s needs may change and therefore eligibility for a home visit should be reassessed on a regular basis.

Definition of Housebound

A patient who is deemed to be housebound when they are unable to leave their home environment through a physical or psychological illness.

A patient is not considered housebound if he or she is able to leave their house with minimal assistance or support. For example: unassisted/assisted visit to the Doctor, dentist, hairdresser, supermarket, social events or hospital outpatients. Minimal assistance would be described as a person who can leave their own home and travel to a clinic appointment in a vehicle such as a personal car, taxi or public transport adapted for their use or not and with or without the use of a wheelchair either by themselves or with an
escort.

  • Some patients may not be housebound permanently but rather are housebound temporarily as a consequence of an episode of illness".
  • To avoid further confusion a person will not be regarded as housebound because they do not personally have a companion to escort them to a clinical appointment.
  • Please try to come to the surgery whenever possible, as facilities here are far better for examination and treatment. If you feel a home visit is needed, please complete the online triage form or phone where possible before 10.30am and give the receptionist some indication of the problem so that the visiting doctor will know how urgent the visit is. You may receive a telephone call back from a doctor in order to assess the situation further.
  • Please follow the guidelines if you feel your medical problem is an Emergency.
  • Each patient’s eligibility for home visits will be individually determined by the clinician, based on the above definition and patients assessed as not meeting the criteria for housebound will be expected to attend a clinic or surgery setting. Individual circumstances will be monitored and
  • where an individual and/or health care professional assesses that the patient’s needs have changed, the patient’s housebound status will be reviewed.