Requesting a Home Visit
If you are too ill to attend the practice to see a doctor, a home visit may be requested by contacting the practice before 10.30am. All calls received will be triaged by a doctor to see if a house call is needed, or the problem is best dealt with over the phone, or by you attending practice. If a home visit is appropriate this may be undertaken by the on call doctor or may be passed onto the SWASfT home visiting service. The SWASfT service employs paramedics centrally in Swindon and they will not be doctor you know from the practice.
We are prepared to arrange visits to people at home if they are house bound or seriously ill, but on average it takes 4 times longer than seeing patients in practice, so in the interests of other patients, please try and come to the practice.
Non-urgent advice: Please note
You have no automatic right to a home visit.
You can request a visit, but it is up to the doctor to decide whether you actually need one or not.
Conditions that DO NOT require Home Visits
If you have any of the conditions in the table below, you should not expect to be visited routinely as it is safe and more appropriate if you are seen in the surgery:
Patient | Conditions that DO NOT require Home Visits |
---|---|
Young Children | Fevers, coughs and colds, wheezing, difficulty breathing, earache, rashes, diarrhoea and vomiting, tummy pains and most other problems. |
Older Children and Adults | Fevers, coughs and colds, ‘flu’, sore throats, back pain, tummy pain, minor breathlessness and other minor illnesses |
Senior Citizens | Poor mobility, joint pain, poor memory or tiredness. The general rule is that if you are fit enough to visit an optician, dentist, friend or do your own shopping, you can come to the surgery. |
Non-urgent advice: Please note
A child with fever comes to no harm from going into cold air outside.
It may even help by reducing their fever
Getting to the Medical Centre
You may not be well enough to travel by bus or walk, but travel by car can be arranged via relatives, friends or taxi firms. It is not the doctor’s job to arrange such transport.
If you think that you might not be able to afford the cost of a taxi in one go, and you have no other means of transport, then it would be wise to save a few pence a week to form a taxi fund to cover the cost of transport to the practice when needed.