Having an emergency? Call your doctor FIRST!

Please call your COME HOME Practice first if you feel you are having an emergency. Emergencies are occasions when you experience severe symptoms and/or a sudden change in your usual state of health. The first responder (telephone operator) will ask you a series of questions to determine if your condition is life threatening. If the answer to any of those questions is yes, you will be transferred immediately to a triage nurse. If you are having symptoms of a heart attack, loss of consciousness, fainting spells, severe bleeding, severe shortness of breath, the nurse will direct you or your family member to call 911, while we also call 911.

If your condition is serious enough to require admission to the hospital, but not immediately life threatening, one of the physician’s at your COME HOME Practice will directly admit you to the hospital and bypass a long Emergency Department wait. If you are stable enough to be seen in the office, we will bring you into the clinic to evaluate. We have found that we often can initiate care in the doctor’s office within the first hour and get your treatment started while we are waiting for a bed to become available in the hospital.

We prefer that our patients come into the doctor’s office for fevers, mild bleeding problems, shortness of breath, and other symptoms that we can manage in the office even if you eventually require hospitalization. We can start your treatment much faster than it is possible in the Emergency Room in most instances or we can stabilize your condition for transfer to the hospital. Often we can avoid having to put you in the hospital.