If possible please try to telephone reception on 01283 217 092 option 1 before 11:00 if you require a home visit.

Home visits are available on request for patients who are housebound because of illness or disability. If you need a home visit, please be prepared to give some details about the reason for the home visit when making the request.

A doctor or nurse may phone you back as it may be that your problem can be dealt with by telephone advice, or that it would be more appropriate to send a nurse, or indeed arrange a hospital attendance.

Please remember that several patients can be seen in the practice in the time that it takes to make one home visit.

There are also better facilities for examining and treating patients at the surgery.

Visit Recommended

• Terminally ill.
• A truly bedbound patient in whom travel to the surgery by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition.

Visit Not Recommended

In most of the following cases a home visit would not be an appropriate use of a doctor’s time.

• Common symptoms of childhood illness; fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most case of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel by car. It is not necessarily harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or walk, but car transport may be available from friends, relatives or taxi firms. It is not a doctor’s responsibility to arrange such transport.
• Adults with common problems; cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pains. These patients are also readily transportable to the surgery.  Common problems in the elderly such as mobility problems, joint pain and general malaise would also best be treated by consultation in the surgery.