Primary care at home in Weldon Spring.

House call primary care in Weldon Spring

For some people in Weldon Spring, the doctor they have seen for years is on the other side of the Missouri River in St. Louis County. Keeping those appointments means the interstate, the bridge and a parking garage, which is a lot to ask of someone who is weak or in pain. In-home primary care follow-up arranged by Gateway brings a partner clinician to the house between those bigger trips, or in place of them. The clinician reviews medications and ongoing conditions, and we send notes to the other doctors involved.

Most homes in Weldon Spring are single-family houses in subdivisions, many with bedrooms upstairs, alongside villas, condominiums and some properties on acreage. Senior living, assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing communities are found here and in the neighboring St. Charles County suburbs. Gateway arranges visits with partner clinicians in all of these settings. If the patient is recovering on the main floor of a two-story house, or staying for a while with adult children, tell us and the visit is planned around that arrangement.

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 a visit can cover

Most in-home primary care follow-up centers on long-term conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, lung disease and kidney disease. At a visit, the treating clinician checks your vital signs, asks what has changed since last time, looks at any readings you keep at home and decides whether the plan needs adjusting.

The same visit can take in a review of your medications, follow-up after a hospital stay, a yearly wellness visit, or orders for tests and specialist appointments. People living with two or more ongoing conditions can also ask about chronic care management, which adds check-ins and care planning between visits. Gateway arranges the visit and keeps track of what the clinician orders afterward.

Who in-home primary care is for

Recovering from surgery or living with a wound changes what a trip to the doctor involves. A leg that needs to stay elevated, a dressing that should stay dry, pain with sitting, or instructions to keep weight off a foot all make travel harder. For people in Weldon Spring in that situation, Gateway can arrange primary care follow-up where they live, so the conditions that affect recovery are not put off until the wound has closed.

The same service helps adults who rarely leave home for other reasons, people in assisted living communities, and people who have no primary care clinician right now.

Primary care and wound healing

Healing takes building material. A body that is short on protein, calories or fluids has less to work with, and appetite often drops during illness and recovery. In primary care follow-up, the treating clinician can ask about eating and weight change, look for causes such as dental pain, trouble swallowing, low mood or medication side effects, and order lab tests or a dietitian referral if needed. See nutrition and healing.

What the wound care clinician sees helps here. A wound that stops improving, or weight loss noticed at a wound visit, is shared with the primary care clinician so the question is asked early.

Wound care in Weldon Spring →

Care settings in Weldon Spring

Where you live can change during an illness: home, then a hospital, then rehab, then perhaps assisted living. Gateway arranges primary care follow-up in the following settings across Weldon Spring:

• Private houses, condos and apartments
• Assisted living communities
• Memory care communities
• Skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities

If you move, tell us the new address and who is in charge of care there. We confirm whether a partner clinician is available for that location and setting, and we help get your records to the new care team so the next visit does not start from zero.

Working with your existing doctors

People who need home visits often have several specialists: a cardiologist, a kidney doctor, an endocrinologist, a vascular surgeon. Each one manages a piece. Primary care is where the pieces are put side by side, so that a new heart medicine is checked against the kidney plan and no test is ordered twice. The treating clinician decides when a referral is needed. Gateway handles the logistics of specialist referrals: sending records ahead, arranging the appointment and transportation, and getting the specialist’s note back to the primary care clinician.

How to arrange a visit

You can make the call for someone else. If your parent, spouse or neighbor in Weldon Spring needs primary care at home, phone 314-325-0126 and tell us your relationship and how to reach you. We will ask whether the person knows about the request and who should be the main contact for scheduling. Before records are gathered or a visit is set, the patient, or the person who legally makes their health decisions, needs to agree. After that, you can be as involved as the patient wants you to be.

• County: St. Charles County, Missouri
• ZIP codes: 63304
• Nearby hospitals: Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital; SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital in St. Charles; Progress West Hospital in O'Fallon (not affiliated with Gateway)
• Nearby communities: St. Peters, Cottleville, Dardenne Prairie, St. Charles, Chesterfield and West County
• 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

• Weldon Spring
• Primary care
• In-home primary care
• Primary care and wound care together
• Primary care at home
• Primary care at home
• Primary care at home