Primary care at home in Wildwood.

House call primary care in Wildwood

Living in Wildwood means accepting a drive for nearly everything, and that includes the doctor. For a healthy adult it is part of the bargain. For an older resident who has stopped driving, or a spouse who is the only driver and the only caregiver, routine appointments start to slip. In-home primary care follow-up helps keep them on the calendar. Gateway arranges visits with a partner clinician who reviews medications, tracks chronic conditions and follows up after hospital stays, and we coordinate records with the patient’s other doctors.

Homes in Wildwood range from houses on several wooded acres at the end of a long driveway to conventional subdivisions and the more compact streets around the town center. Senior living, including assisted living and memory care, is found in Wildwood and in nearby Ellisville, Ballwin and Chesterfield. Gateway arranges visits with partner clinicians in private homes and facilities alike. For rural addresses we ask about gates, driveway conditions and pets, so the clinician arrives prepared and nobody is surprised at the door.

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

Medications are often where a home visit starts. With the bottles on the table, the treating clinician can compare what is prescribed with what you take, including over-the-counter products, vitamins and supplements. Lists tend to drift after a hospital stay or when several prescribers are involved, and a medication review at home can catch duplicates, gaps and doses that no longer match. Any change is the clinician’s decision, so keep taking your medicines as prescribed until you are told otherwise.

From there the visit moves to the rest of your health: how long-term conditions are doing, what a recent hospital stay left unfinished, whether a wellness visit is due, and which tests or specialist appointments need to be arranged.

People who benefit most

Not everyone who calls us has a doctor. Some adults in Wildwood 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.

How primary care supports 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 Wildwood →

Care settings in Wildwood

For someone living with dementia, a trip to a clinic can mean a strange room, a long wait and a hard day afterward. Seeing the clinician in a familiar place is usually calmer. In memory care communities in Wildwood, the visiting clinician can talk with the staff who know the resident’s normal routine, and a family member or legal decision-maker can join in person or by phone.

Gateway also arranges primary care follow-up in houses, apartments, assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. Availability depends on the location and the type of setting, and we confirm it before a visit is booked.

Working with your existing doctors

It helps to know who is responsible for what:

• The treating clinician examines you, makes the diagnosis, writes orders and prescriptions, and decides on treatment
• Your existing physician and specialists keep the parts of your care that they and the treating clinician agree on
• Home health nurses and therapists carry out the orders they are given and report changes
• Gateway schedules visits, gathers records, follows through on orders and keeps everyone informed
• You and your family decide who is included and tell the team what has changed

If you are ever unsure whom to ask, call Gateway and we will point you to the right person.

How to start

Some people in Wildwood come to primary care through another door. If Gateway already coordinates wound care for you, tell your coordinator that you would like primary care follow-up too. We already have your address and contact details. If you are in a hospital or rehab center, the discharge planner can make a referral before you leave. Facility nurses and physician offices can do the same by phone at 314-325-0126 or by fax at 314-786-7966. Whoever starts the request, we confirm availability before anything is scheduled.

• County: St. Louis County, Missouri
• ZIP codes: 63005, 63011, 63021, 63038, 63040
• Nearby hospitals: St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield; Mercy Hospital St. Louis in Creve Coeur (not affiliated with Gateway)
• Nearby communities: Chesterfield, Chesterfield and West County, Ballwin, Ellisville, Eureka, Franklin County
• Care settings: Private homes, skilled nursing, assisted living, memory care and rehabilitation

Coverage questions

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

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