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Please dial 999 in case of a genuine life threatening emergency.

If it is a life threatening situation requesting a visit from a GP can delay life-saving treatment.

Examples of such situations are:

Myocardial infarction/ Heart attack
Severe shortness of breath
Severe haemorrhage
Suspected stroke

Patients are therefore advised to ring the emergency services directly.

Home visits are an integral and sometimes necessary part of general practice. However they can be time consuming and often don't enable the best care or assessment to be delivered.

It is recognised by GPs across the UK that home visits are not a good use of valuable NHS resources unless circumstances are such that home visiting is unavoidable such as for patients that are terminally ill, or truly 'bed-bound'.

It would be expected that patients make use of family/friends and taxi services to get to the practice. Removing a GP from their clinic reduces their capacity to see patients and further pressurises valuable NHS resources.

As GP workload escalates, making best use of valuable GP and clinical time is a priority.

It may be the case that where you require urgent investigations, that you need to go to A&E. General Practice is not designed to deliver emergency care or assessment (with urgent bloods and investigations etc.) Often, this can be decided from the history you provide the GP over the phone.

Home visits are reserved mainly for terminally ill patients and patients who are truly bed-bound.

For more information about home visits in primary care and the rationale to limit their use where possible, please see: here.