Patients are requested to telephone before 10.30am if a home visit is needed that day. Only Emergency visits can be arranged after that time. Please give the receptionist as much information as possible to enable the doctors to allocate priority to house calls. (Remember that several patients can be seen at the surgery in the time that it takes to do a single home visit.) Home visits are for housebound patients and those genuinely too ill to travel to the surgery, and a doctor will usually wish to speak to you by phone before making a visit.
Emergency Care Practitioner / Paramedic
In conjunction with other GP surgeries in north-west Essex and North Uttlesford Primary Care Network, Gold Street Surgery has commissioned an Emergency Care Practitioner, Vicky Bryning (f) to carry out some home visits. An Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) is a fully trained and experienced senior Paramedic who has also undertaken specific additional training to extend their clinical assessment and treatment skills. Using an ECP, working closely with surgery GPs, means that more home visits can carried out, earlier in the day, leading to earlier treatment or referral to hospital or other health services where needed. The ECP project is being funded by Hertfordshire and West Essex Clinical Integrated Care Board as part of a series of initiatives aimed at improving health care across West Essex.