For referring clinicians

Referral criteria for a home medical visit.

What we can assess and treat in a patient's home, what belongs in a hospital instead, and how to send us a patient. Written for GPs, primary care network clinics and nursing teams.

The service in short

A doctor who attends the patient, day or night.

Urgent Care At Home Pte Ltd attends patients at home or on site, islandwide, 24 hours a day including nights, weekends and public holidays. Our doctors practise across emergency, family and palliative medicine, and each has trained in a Singapore public emergency department.

We add capacity alongside your practice rather than replacing it. Every visit ends with a written summary returned to the referring clinician, with the patient's consent, so the patient stays under your care.

Visits are not claimable on MediSave, MediShield Life or CHAS. Some private and corporate outpatient plans do reimburse home GP visits; we issue an itemised receipt and visit summary for claims.

What we manage at home

Presentations suited to a home visit.

Commonly referred, and what we do

  • Cellulitis — IV antibiotics
  • Pyelonephritis without hydronephrosis — IV antibiotics
  • Gastroenteritis — IV fluids, antiemetics, and antibiotics where indicated
  • Pneumonia — IV antibiotics
  • Dengue fever without red flags — IV hydration and daily bloods
  • Pressure ulcers — antibiotics, dressing and debridement

Acute, non-emergency

Fever and infections, respiratory and urinary infections, gastroenteritis and dehydration, wound care, minor injuries, and flare-ups of a known chronic condition — in a patient for whom travel to a clinic is impractical, unsafe or unnecessary.

Post-discharge & post-operative

Surgical-site and wound review, dressing changes, medication reconciliation against the discharge list, and recovery monitoring in the weeks after an admission. Available as single visits or a fixed-fee recovery retainer.

Frail elderly

Assessment of functional decline and the “not themselves” presentation, falls without red flags, delirium screening, and review of a patient whose baseline has shifted without an obvious cause.

At the bedside, a doctor can carry out: IV cannulation, 12-lead ECG, nebulisation, bedside ultrasound of a single region, wound dressing and suturing, suture removal, indwelling catheter insertion and fill-and-pull, nasogastric tube insertion, ear syringing, foreign-body removal, drain and line removal including surgical, chest, CVP and PICC, backslab application, manual bladder washout, faecal manual evacuation, joint aspiration and incision and drainage. Blood and radiology investigations are arranged and billed at cost.

Documentation is included in the visit fee — visit summary, medical certificate, prescription and referral letters where the assessment supports them. Insurance and medico-legal letters, ACP, AMD and LPA certification and disability assessments are available as billed items.

Palliative and end-of-life patients are covered separately — see what we manage alongside your palliative team.

Paediatrics: the ordinary childhood illnesses — fever, coughs and colds, sore throat, ear pain, rashes, vomiting and diarrhoea. For any infant under 3 months, please call before referring so we can advise honestly whether a home visit is appropriate.

Palliative & end of life

Managed at home, alongside your team.

We work with the patient’s existing hospice or palliative team rather than in place of it — most often for symptom changes between their scheduled reviews, and for the hours when they are not contactable.

Underlying conditions

  • Advanced cancer
  • End-stage organ failure: heart failure, COPD, chronic kidney disease, liver failure
  • Advanced dementia
  • Neurodegenerative disease: motor neurone disease, advanced Parkinson’s
  • End-of-life frailty

Symptoms a doctor can assess and treat in the home

Managed with the measures below, including medication given by injection where needed.

  • Pain, including breakthrough pain
  • Breathlessness — positioning, fan therapy and oxygen where appropriate
  • Nausea and vomiting — antiemetics
  • Agitation, terminal restlessness and delirium
  • Respiratory secretions
  • Constipation
  • Anxiety and distress
  • Seizures in the dying patient
  • Anorexia and cachexia
  • Dry mouth and mouth care
  • Pruritus
  • Insomnia
  • Malignant bowel obstruction, inoperable — symptom control only
  • Fungating wounds and pressure ulcers — dressing, debridement, odour control
  • Lymphoedema

Procedures at the bedside

  • Indwelling catheter insertion for retention
  • Rectal tube insertion; manual faecal evacuation
  • Nasogastric tube insertion
  • Flushing an existing surgical or pleural drain
  • Wound debridement and dressing
  • ACP, AMD and LPA certification
  • Certification of an expected death, cause known

Certification has a limit worth knowing before you refer

A doctor can certify a death at home where it was expected and the cause is known. A death that is sudden, unexpected or unnatural must by law be reported to the police on 999 and is referred to the Coroner; no private doctor can certify it.

Exclusion criteria

What we do not manage.

A home visit is not a substitute for emergency care, and it cannot deliver imaging or same-hour hospital investigations. Please route the following elsewhere.

Call 995 — never refer for a home visit

  • Central chest pain, tightness or pressure
  • Difficulty breathing, gasping or rapid breathing
  • Any FAST sign of stroke — facial droop, arm weakness, slurred speech, sudden confusion, loss of balance or sudden visual change
  • Heavy or uncontrolled bleeding
  • Seizure
  • Sudden severe headache
  • Severe allergic reaction
  • Unresponsiveness, or rapidly worsening drowsiness
  • A serious accident or major injury
  • A baby under 3 months with a fever
  • In a child — a rash that does not fade on pressure; unusual floppiness or drowsiness; stiff neck with fever; persistent vomiting with no wet nappies or tears

Hospital, not a house call — a home visit cannot deliver what is needed

  • A head injury in a patient on an anticoagulant — warfarin, apixaban, rivaroxaban or dabigatran. Needs CT imaging even if they appear well.
  • Suspected hip fracture, or any suspected fracture requiring X-ray
  • Suspected DVT — a swollen, hot, painful calf. Same-day hospital assessment, though not an ambulance.
  • Any presentation requiring imaging or hospital blood results within the hour
  • Any infant under 3 months — call us first, whatever the problem

Outside the scope of this service

  • Emergency or life-saving treatment of any kind
  • Routine, stable primary care — repeat prescriptions, long-standing problems and non-urgent reviews belong in your clinic, and a home visit is the more expensive option for a patient who can travel
  • Replacing a hospice or home-palliative team — we work alongside them, most often for after-hours symptom changes between their scheduled reviews
  • Certifying a sudden, unexpected or unnatural death — that must be reported to the police on 999 and is referred to the Coroner; no private doctor can certify it
  • Issuing a medical certificate or prescription on request — both follow the doctor's examination, not the booking

If a case sits on the line, call and describe it. We would rather tell you a patient needs an emergency department than accept a referral we should not take.

How to refer

One call, and the patient stays yours.

1 · Call us

+65 8850 5133, any hour. Have the presenting problem, the patient's location and the time window you want. Clinical details are taken by phone or at hello@urgentcareathome.sg — please do not send patient-identifiable information by WhatsApp.

2 · We confirm before we commit

We tell you which doctor is available for that address and time band, and the arrival window, before anything is agreed. If the case is outside our criteria we say so on the call and tell you where it should go.

3 · The summary comes back to you

A written visit summary is returned to the referring clinician with the patient's consent, covering findings, what was treated and what was prescribed. Where transfer was needed, a structured handover goes to the receiving team.

For clinics or agencies referring regularly, coverage can be arranged as a retainer sized to your volume and hours rather than visit by visit — see for business.

What the patient pays

Fees, so you can set expectations.

The visit fee is flat for the time band and confirmed before the doctor sets off. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm; after hours is a single band covering weekday evenings and nights, weekends and public holidays.

  • Home visit, office hours — $300. Covers a 30-minute consultation.
  • Home visit, after hours — $450.
  • Additional 30 minutes — +$120 office hours, +$150 after hours.
  • Additional patient at the same address — $200.
  • Certification of an expected death — at the home-visit rate for the time window.

Procedures are charged at a fixed rate each; medication and consumables by actual usage; radiology and laboratory investigations at cost. The doctor prices anything additional with the patient before proceeding, and every visit comes with an itemised receipt. The full schedule is on our fees page.

Clinician line

Refer a patient, or set up a standing arrangement.

Call to discuss a case, or to talk about regular coverage for your clinic, network or agency.

Urgent Care At Home Pte Ltd · UEN 202627146M

Contact: hello@urgentcareathome.sg · +65 8850 5133

Urgent Care At Home Pte Ltd is licensed under the Healthcare Services Act 2020 to provide an Outpatient Medical Service by remote and temporary premises.

If you need emergency or life-saving treatment, do not seek it through this service. Call 995 or go to the nearest Emergency Department immediately.