Home visits are at the discretion of the GP or allocating Clinician who will determine if the visit is clinically necessary. Visits are reserved for patients who are genuinely housebound, including those in nursing and residential homes, and terminally ill patients.
What is a housebound patient?
A patient is housebound if they are; 'unable to leave the house at all due to physical or mental illness'.
There is currently huge pressures on the NHS and it is our responsibility to ensure that services are used appropriately and that patients receive the best care that we can offer. By working together we hope to achieve a better experience for administrative and reception staff, clinicians and most importantly our patients and their relatives.
We know that concerns about patients’ health are at the heart of requests for home visits and we accept that sometimes patients are too poorly or immobile to be brought to surgery.
In situations where this is not the case we ask patients to help us, by arranging to come in to surgery or be brought to the surgery by carers, relatives or friends. This will then allow the practice to provide care for another 3 or 4 patients in the time a home visit would take. In addition patients are then seen in the most optimum environment with the right equipment, full medical records and other health care professionals for advice where required.
All patients’ care is optimised if they can attend the surgery.
Therefore if a patient is well enough to leave the home to attend external activities arrangements should be made for them to be seen at the surgery and not as a home visit.
When is a home visit appropriate?
A Clinician may conduct a home visit if they believe the patient’s condition:
- Prevents them from travelling to the practice, or
- The condition may deteriorate as a result of travelling to the practice.
Home visits will not be authorised as a result of:
- A lack of transport.
- The patient’s financial situation.
- Childcare issues.
- Poor weather conditions.
- Any other situation deemed inappropriate by the clinician.
Home visit requests
Requests for home visits at Library House Surgery are received via telephone between 8.00am and 11.30am. Requests received after 11.30am are to be instructed to call back the following day, unless urgent and then should be referred to the on-call doctor and added to the on-call list.
At the point of a visit request coming into Practice, reception and admin staff should advise that a visit is not always guaranteed, and that the triaging Clinician will make the decision as to whether they can:
- Deal with it over the phone.
- Ask the patient to come to surgery.
- Arrange for an appropriate Clinician to visit the patient, this maybe a Clinician from the PCN, a junior doctor, a GP or other member of the clinical team.
- Advise the patient on another course of action i.e. phone an ambulance, go to Urgent Care or A&E.