Primary care at home in Mehlville.

In-home primary care in Mehlville

Many Mehlville households are older couples or widowed homeowners in the house they have owned for decades, with grown children living elsewhere in South County or down in Jefferson County. When one person stops driving, getting to a doctor’s office, even one a few miles away, becomes a project that depends on someone else’s schedule. In-home primary care follow-up means a partner clinician comes to them for medication reviews, chronic condition check-ins and visits after a hospital stay. Gateway coordinates the appointment, the records and, with permission, updates to the adult children who are helping.

Brick ranch homes on quiet subdivision streets make up much of Mehlville, along with condominiums, villas and apartment complexes near Lemay Ferry Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. Senior apartments, assisted living and skilled nursing centers serve the area as well. Gateway arranges partner clinician visits in any of them. In a ranch home, the visit often happens in the bedroom or at the kitchen table. In a facility, we set it up with the nurse on the unit, and the treating clinician’s orders are shared with staff so they can follow them.

This page is part of Gateway's guide to primary care in St. Louis, which covers house calls, wellness visits and chronic care across the region.

What the clinician can look at

A house call covers much of the ground an office visit would. Depending on what the treating clinician finds, primary care follow-up at home can include:

• A check on long-term conditions such as diabetes, heart failure or high blood pressure
• A look at every medication you take, including over-the-counter products and supplements
• Follow-up after a hospital or rehab stay, starting with the discharge papers
• A yearly wellness visit and a talk about vaccines and screenings
• Orders for lab work, imaging or a specialist, with someone tracking the results

New problems that are not emergencies, such as a lingering cough, a rash or poor sleep, can be raised too. The clinician decides what belongs in each visit. Gateway handles the scheduling and records around it.

Who in-home primary care is for

Not everyone who calls us has a doctor. Some adults in Mehlville lost theirs when a practice closed or a physician retired. Others have been in and out of hospitals and rehab and have not had a regular visit in a long time, so nobody is watching the whole picture or renewing prescriptions on schedule. Gateway can help connect you with a partner practice that makes home visits. The page on finding a primary care clinician explains how.

Home visits are also arranged for people who have a doctor but cannot get to the office, including adults with limited mobility, people healing from a wound or an operation, and assisted living residents.

Why wound care and primary care go together

Blood sugar is one of the clearest links between primary care and wound healing. When blood sugar runs high, the body repairs tissue more slowly and has a harder time fighting infection. The wound care clinician works on the wound itself. The primary care clinician manages the diabetes behind it: reviewing readings, ordering lab tests and deciding on medication changes. Read more under diabetes care at home.

When Gateway coordinates both, neither clinician is working blind. If a foot wound stalls, the primary care clinician hears about it. If diabetes medicines change, the wound care team knows to watch how the wound responds.

Wound care in Mehlville →

Where visits take place

In an assisted living community, a primary care visit involves more people than the resident and the clinician. Staff often manage medications and watch for day-to-day changes, so new orders need to reach the community’s nurse in writing, and staff observations need to reach the clinician. Gateway handles that back-and-forth for residents in Mehlville. Read more about primary care in assisted living.

Visits are arranged in private homes, apartments, memory care and skilled nursing as well. Each community has its own rules for outside clinicians, so we check those along with availability.

Keeping your current physician involved

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.

How to arrange a visit

To ask about primary care at home in Mehlville, call Gateway at 314-325-0126. The first conversation is practical. We ask for the address, whether it is a house, an apartment or a facility, what kind of help is needed, and whether a physician is already involved. Then we check whether a partner clinician is available for that location and setting. If one is, we gather records with your permission, set a visit date with you and tell you which practice will be coming.

• County: St. Louis County, Missouri
• ZIP codes: 63125, 63129
• Nearby hospitals: Mercy Hospital South (not affiliated with Gateway)
• Nearby communities: Oakville, Affton, South County, Arnold, South St. Louis
• Care settings: Private homes, skilled nursing, assisted living, memory care and rehabilitation

Insurance and coverage

You can ask Gateway about Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and commercial insurance when you call. We cannot tell you over the phone that a visit is a covered benefit, because that depends on three things: the treating practice that would see you, the details of your plan and the care the clinician finds you need. What we can do is tell you which practice would be involved, so you can confirm with your plan before the first visit. The insurance page lists questions worth asking.

Common questions

Related pages

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