How to organise physio home visits without losing hours
Group home visits by area, set realistic slots with travel time, keep them to fixed half-days and ask for the address upfront. A guide for physiotherapists.
6 min read
Home visits stay manageable when they have their own place in your week. Keep them to fixed half-days, group patients by area on each of those half-days, make every home-visit slot long enough to include the drive, and collect the address and access details when the visit is booked. Treat home visits as a separate service with its own price and slots, so clinic patients can't book into your travel time and home patients can't book outside your rounds.
Why home visits eat up a physio's week
Home visits are often the part of the job with the most meaning: patients just out of hospital, older people who can't travel, people with neurological conditions who progress best in their own environment. They're also where hours disappear. A 30-minute session becomes an hour and a half once you add parking, stairs, a door code nobody gave you and the drive to the next address on the other side of town.
The fix isn't to do fewer visits; it's to stop scattering them across the week.
Give home visits fixed half-days
Choose one or two half-days a week for home visits and keep everything else at the practice. For example, Tuesday and Thursday mornings on the road, the rest in clinic. This does two things: clinic patients always find you at the practice when they expect you, and your home patients get a regular time they can plan around, often with a carer or relative present.
In your calendar, open home-visit slots only on those half-days. A patient booking a home visit then can't choose Friday afternoon when you're in clinic, and a clinic patient can't book a slot you've kept for the road.
Make each slot include the travel
If a home session lasts 30 minutes of treatment, the slot isn't 30 minutes. Add the realistic time to get there, park, get in and set up. The table below shows one way to think about it; adjust it to your area, traffic and patients.
| Area | Treatment | Travel and set-up | Slot to open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same neighbourhood as the practice | 30 min | 15 min | 45 min |
| Nearby town or district | 30 min | 25 to 30 min | 1 h |
| Rural area or across the city | 30 min | 40 min or more | 1 h 15 or keep for a dedicated round |
Set the price of the home-visit service to reflect that time. Clinic sessions and home sessions are different services, with different lengths and prices, even if the treatment itself is the same.
Group patients by area
A round that zig-zags across town wastes more time than any late patient. When you take on a new home patient, look at which half-day already has patients near them and offer that day first. Over a few weeks, each round settles into a geographical loop: Tuesday for the north side, Thursday for the south, for instance.
If you work in a wide area, say it in the service description ("home visits within 10 km of the practice" or "home visits in these districts") so patients from outside your area ask first rather than book.
Collect what you need before the first visit
Ask for the details in the booking note, or by phone when you book for the patient:
- the full address, floor and door code;
- whether there's a lift, and where to park;
- who will be there (the patient alone, a relative, a carer);
- the prescription or referral, and any equipment already at home.
Five minutes of questions before the first visit saves the ten minutes standing outside a building that often happen when you don't ask.
Book the series, not just the next visit
Home patients don't always book online themselves; relatives or carers may do it for them, or you do it at the end of a visit. Once you know the treatment will last several weeks, book the whole series on the same half-day and time, so the round stays stable. When a patient finishes their treatment, their slot becomes the place for the next home patient in that area.
Leave room for the unexpected
A patient who isn't ready, a carer running late, a session that needs longer after a fall: home visits are less predictable than clinic ones. Keep the last slot of each round a little longer, or leave a short gap before you're due back at the practice, so one difficult visit doesn't make you late for the afternoon's clinic patients.