Home Visiting Service

Thanet Health CIC is delighted to be the provider of a primary care Home Visiting Services within Thanet as part of a Kent & Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (K&M CCG) led pilot.  

The team consisting of one GP and a number of ACPs, ANPs and PPs aim is to support our patients, practices and care homes in Thanet with excellent clinical support care throughout the day, helping our GP practices to reduce their workload, enable care homes and house bound patients to have clinicians available to deliver a home visit throughout the day and working in close collaboration with the other providers (c-Art, KCHFT (district nurses), social services and third sector (charitable organisations). 

The service is accessed through the GP surgeries (Care homes, patients will normally* request a visit from their GP), the clinicians assess the need of the patient through triaging and then may decide to refer the patient to our HVS.

*We are currently running a pilot regarding direct telephone access to the Home Visiting Service.  It was decided to give a small number of Care Homes direct access to the Service. Currently there are 3 homes for Care PCN within the pilot – we intend to review SECAmb data after three months, to see if the Care Home Team having direct access to the Home Visiting Team, reduces the amount of conveyance to hospital and improves patient and staff outcomes.  

The HVS has full access to the GP records of the patients and documents the encounter also in real time into the practices EMIS, so that the communication with all other people involved in the patient’s care can be informed immediately about the outcomes.

The current provision has capacity for 40-50 visits a day throughout Thanet. This is constantly reviewed and will be adjusted according to need – especially in the    current Covid-19 pandemic. We are enabled to see patients with Covid-19 symptoms or contact.