Primary care at home in Cottleville.

House call primary care in Cottleville

People who retire in Cottleville often choose it for an easier life: a smaller home, a quiet street, family a few minutes away. Health needs tend to grow anyway. Several conditions, several specialists and several medication lists can become hard to keep straight, especially when each office is in a different city. In-home primary care follow-up gives one clinician a regular look at the whole picture. Gateway arranges those visits with a partner clinician and coordinates records and communication among the offices involved.

Cottleville has a mix of established houses near the old town, newer single-family subdivisions, and attached villas and townhomes that appeal to people who want less upkeep. Assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing are available in Cottleville or close by in St. Peters and O’Fallon. Gateway arranges visits with partner clinicians in all of these settings. Villas and ranch-style homes often make home visits simple, with a ground-floor bedroom and few steps, and facility visits are scheduled with the staff who know the resident’s routine.

For the full range of services, see primary care in St. Louis, including house calls, annual wellness visits and follow-up after a hospital stay.

What in-home primary care includes

A good share of primary care happens after the clinician leaves. A blood test has to be drawn, an imaging appointment booked, a specialist’s report sent back and read. When the treating clinician writes an order, Gateway follows it through and keeps the results moving to the people who need them. Depending on where you live, some tests can be arranged at home. Others mean a trip, and we can help with lab and imaging coordination and transportation arrangements.

The visits themselves cover what you would expect from a primary care office: long-term conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure, a full medication review, follow-up after a hospital stay and a yearly wellness visit.

People who benefit most

Getting to a doctor’s office is the hard part for many people in Cottleville. Stairs, a wheelchair, an oxygen tank, no longer driving, or needing a second person just to reach the car can turn a short appointment into a full day. In-home primary care is arranged for adults in that position, whether or not they think of themselves as homebound. Our page on primary care for homebound adults goes into detail.

It also suits people recovering from surgery or living with a wound, residents of assisted living, and anyone whose longtime doctor has retired or moved and who has gone without primary care since.

Primary care and wound healing

A wound on the leg or foot needs blood flow to heal, and checking circulation is partly a primary care job. The primary care clinician asks about leg pain with walking, checks the pulses in your feet, reviews risks such as smoking, diabetes and high cholesterol, and decides whether a circulation test or a vascular specialist is needed. The page on circulation and vascular health explains the basics.

Those results matter to the wound care clinician, because poor arterial flow changes which treatments are safe, including compression. Gateway sends test results and specialist notes to both clinicians, so each one is working from the same facts.

Wound care in Cottleville →

Where visits take place

Skilled nursing works differently from the other places where Gateway arranges primary care follow-up. Every resident already has an attending physician who is responsible for medical care, and facility nurses carry out the orders. We do not replace that team. In facilities in Cottleville, we coordinate with the attending and the nursing staff, and we plan follow-up for the day a resident leaves. See primary care follow-up in skilled nursing.

After discharge, a partner clinician can visit at the next address, whether that is a private home, an apartment, assisted living or memory care.

One care team, shared information

Home health and primary care are different jobs that depend on each other. A home health agency sends nurses and therapists, and they work from a clinician’s signed orders. The primary care clinician writes and updates those orders and decides what to do when the nurse reports a change. Without a clinician they can reach, home health staff are left waiting for answers. When Gateway coordinates primary care for someone who has home health, we tell the agency which practice is responsible, where to send reports and whom to call with a concern.

Getting started in Cottleville

Before you call 314-325-0126 about primary care in Cottleville, it helps to have a few things nearby:

• The address where visits would take place, and the type of residence
• Insurance cards
• A list of current medications, or the bottles themselves
• The name of any doctor or specialist already involved
• Dates of recent hospital or rehab stays
• A phone number where we can reach you, and the person we should talk to

Nothing on this list is required to make the call. If you are missing something, we can work it out with you afterward.

• County: St. Charles County, Missouri
• ZIP codes: 63304, 63376
• Nearby hospitals: Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital; Progress West Hospital in O'Fallon (not affiliated with Gateway)
• Nearby communities: St. Peters, O'Fallon, Missouri, Weldon Spring, Dardenne Prairie, St. Charles
• Care settings: Private homes, skilled nursing, assisted living, memory care and rehabilitation

What to ask about your plan

Before a first home visit, a call to the member number on your insurance card can answer most cost questions. Useful things to ask:

• Does this practice participate in my plan?
• Do I need a referral or prior authorization for visits at home?
• What would I owe for a visit?
• Are lab work, imaging and medical equipment handled differently?

Write down the date, the name of the person you spoke with and what they said. Gateway can give you the name of the treating practice to use for that call.

Common questions

Related pages

• Cottleville
• Primary care
• In-home primary care
• Primary care and wound care together
• Primary care at home
• Primary care at home
• Primary care at home