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GPs assess whether a patient requires a home visit based primarily on clinical need. Each case is assessed on its own merit.
Home visiting guidelines
The GP’s clinical judgement, based on the individual case presented, must preside at all times.
1. A GP home visit is recommended if:
GP home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:-
- The terminally ill
- The truly bed-bound patient, for whom travel to premises by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort
2. A GP home visit may be useful:
After initial assessment over the telephone, a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s attendance to prepare them for travel to hospital – that is, where a GP’s other commitments do not prevent him/her from arriving before the ambulance. Examples of such situations are:
- Myocardial infarction
- Severe shortness of breath
- Severe haemorrhage
- Severe dizziness and vomiting
- Abdominal pain and vomiting
- Patients who are immobilised by pain (e.g. severe back pain)
3. A GP visit is not usual:
In most of these cases, to visit would not be an appropriate use of a GP’s time:
- Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel with their parents by car. It is not necessarily harmful to take a child with a fever outside and a hospital unit is often the best place for a child to be seen to allow quick emergency treatment if needed. These children may not be fit to travel by bus or to walk but it is not a doctor’s duty to arrange their transport and would seek to confirm if car transport could be available from friends, relatives or by taxi.
- Adults with common problems such as a cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transported by car to a doctor’s premises.
- Common problems in the elderly such as poor mobility, joint pain, and general malaise may be best treated by the patient’s own GP.
How long will I wait for a GP visit?
- Each visit is prioritised so that patients with the most serious conditions are visited first
- Urgent visits for palliative care patients are carried out within 1 hour*
- Urgent visits are carried out within 2 hours**
- Less urgent visits are carried out within 6 hours**
- The driver will contact you ahead of the visit to provide an estimated time of arrival
*Our own agreed standard
**Department of Health standard
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