Home Visits

If you require a home visit please (except in genuine emergencies) try to telephone us before 10.00 am as this helps our Doctors to plan their time efficiently.

Please be prepared to give the receptionist a brief outline of the problem as this helps us see the most appropriate cases first. Please note that our receptionists will only add visit requests to our daily visit list, ultimately it will be the Doctor who decides if your request for a visit is appropriate. If they decide that it is not appropriate for you to be visited at home, you will notified by telephone and informed you that you will need to attend the surgery to be seen.

Home Visits Guidelines

If you require a home visit please expect that you will be required to give the receptionist some indication of the nature of the problem. This then permits the doctor to make some assessment of the urgency of your request.

Our home visit guidelines are as follows:-

Home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving the terminally ill or the truly housebound patient for whom travel by car would cause a significant deterioration in their medical condition.

Following a conversation with a health professional, it may be agreed that a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s visit. Alternatively doctors may decide that an ambulance to take the patient to hospital may be more appropriate than a home visit.

GP visit is not appropriate

In most of these cases a visit would not be an appropriate use of your GP’s time or best for the patient, for example:

Emergencies
If you believe a patient is seriously ill and needs an urgent visit, a doctor will call you back to assess whether the patient can wait for the doctor to visit or if an emergency ambulance needs to be called.

Examples of these situations are: Chest Pain, Stroke, Shortness of breath, Severe bleeding

In this case it is essential to get the patient to hospital as soon as possible and the correct approach is to call ‘999’ for an ambulance.

Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually readily transportable and able to travel to the surgery. It is also likely that they would be assessed & treated more rapidly and effectively by attending the surgery, rather than waiting for a doctor to visit.

Please note: it is not harmful to take a child with fever outside.

Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, general malaise, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transportable to the doctor’s surgery. 

Summary

Home Visits are reserved for those patients who are too ill or too frail to attend the surgery. They are not a way for patients to resolve personal transportation problems. If a lack of transport is the only reason for requesting a home visit, then please note that your request will almost certainly be considered as inappropriate, and you will therefore be asked to come to the surgery to be seen.

Please remember home visits after 12-noon are reserved for genuine emergencies only. After this time there is only one doctor ‘on-call’ and the time taken for a single home visit could be used to see up to 10 more patients at the surgery.

If you request a home visit after 12-noon, it is likely that the ‘on-call’ doctor will telephone you to assess the urgency of situation and to decide whether the patient should be brought to the surgery where we have the necessary facilities and to best deal with the problem.

GP Consultations

Appointments can be made with the receptionist in person at reception, or by telephoning the practice Monday to Friday from 8.30am on 028 7776 6354. We are unable to take appointment requests by letter or email. There are receptionists available throughout the day to answer phone calls—at busy times we would ask you please to be patient. We aim to answer all phone calls as promptly as possible and do not like to keep callers waiting unnecessarily.

The doctors consult between the hours of 9.00 to 12.00 and 2.00 to 5.00 pm Monday to Friday. The exact surgery hours vary with each doctor. 

The receptionist staff are all trained to Care Navigate and will ask a little about why you are calling to ensure they can direct you to the most appropriate member of the practice team. All GP consultations are initially by telephone, please be aware that the practice number will not be displayed but will appear as a private or withheld number. Please ensure if you are expecting a call back from the practice that your mobile phone accepts calls from 'no caller ID'.

DNA POLICY

The practice has become increasingly concerned about patients failing to attend for pre booked appointments.

The practice has developed the following policy to try to improve the situation.

If you are unable to attend an appointment with either the doctor or nurse we would ask you to phone 028777 66354 Monday-Friday 8.30am to 6.00pm.

If you fail to attend for 2 consecutive appointments without contacting the practice we will write to you asking for an explanation, if after this you fail to attend for a 3^rd appointment you will be invited to speak to the practice manager and you may be removed from the practice list if the problem persists.

A register will be held of patients who regularly DNA with a record of action taken, letters sent out, interviews with the practice manager or removal from the list.

Our treatment room operates an appointment system Monday to Friday 9.00am to 5.30pm and appointments are booked by reception staff, in person or by telephone. 

Please try to arrive on time for your appointment and cancel any unwanted appointments as soon as possible. Your help is appreciated.