St Georges Medical Centre Parsons Lane Littleport, Cambs. CB6 1JU

Tel: 01353 864100 Fax: 01353 864171

Housebound Patients and HOME VISITS

Not all patients can attend surgery. Patients who are too ill or physically incapable of travelling to the surgery may request a home visit. Patients who are able to go out on trips ie to the shops, pharmacy or hairdressers should be able to visit the surgery.

The decision as to whether or not a home visit is warranted rests with the GP.

Patients are asked to telephone to requests visits as early as possible. The majority of requests should therefore be received in the morning. No guarantee should be given as to which GP will attend.

If requests are received after 11.00am and the patient advises that the visit cannot wait until the next day, the request should be passed to the doctor on-call.

All requests for visits must be booked into the Home Visit screen.

Check the following details with the patient/caller: -

 Patient’s name and date of birth  Address (if not home address, check current address is in catchment area for visits and clearly highlight that the patient is not at home). If patient is at an address outside of the practice catchment area advise them to contact a local GP to be seen as a temporary resident.  Contact telephone number (and caller’s name/relationship to patient) - double check this by reading the number back to the patient/caller  Nature of problem and length of time since symptoms started  The date and time of the request will be automatically saved  Advise the caller that the GP may telephone them before visiting.

For patients experiencing CHEST PAIN or requests for URGENT or IMMEDIATE visits should be referred immediately to the on-call doctor for advice.

Patients that meet the criteria for a home visit will receive domiciliary visits for Warfarin Monitoring. The patients will receive INR testing in a timely manner at home (including residential / nursing homes).

On return to the surgery the result will be entered into INRstar. Dosing must be done by an appropriately qualified member of staff. The documentation requirements for housebound patients are no different from those patients who are able to attend the surgery.

All doses will be written in the patients yellow book with follow up appointment dates and should then be collected by 5pm from the surgery on the same day as monitoring by the carer or a responsible person.

Particular care should be taken when communicating dose changes to patients in social care settings (e.g. nursing or residential care homes). The nurse in charge should be informed of the warfarin dose and next review date.

Reviewed: October 2014