These are our home visiting guidelines, which have been compiled with guidance from the Leicestershire LMC (Local Medical Committee). 

Visit recommended

We believe home visiting makes clinical sense and is the best way of giving a medical opinion in cases involving:-

• the terminally ill 
• the truly housebound for whom travel to the surgery by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.

Visit may be useful

After an initial assessment over the telephone a seriously ill patient may be helped by a GP’s attendance.  However the GP may advise the patient, or person with the patient, to ring 999 to receive the appropriate immediate care. 
Examples of such situations are:- 

• heart attack 
• severe shortness of breath 
• severe heamorrhage

Visit is not usual

In most of the following 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 by car. It is not necessarily harmful to take a child with a fever outside. These children may not be fit to travel by 'bus or to walk, but car transport may be available from friends, relatives or taxi firms.
• adults with common problems (such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain) are also readily transportable by car to a doctor's premises. 
• common problems in the elderly (such as mobility problems, joint pain and general malaise) would also best be treated by consultation at a doctor's premises.

It is the patient's, or their relative or carer's responsibility to arrange transport, not the surgery's.