Home Physiotherapy & Occupational Therapy in Petersfield

Petersfield is better served than most of the places we cover, and it would be dishonest to open any other way. Petersfield Hospital on Swan Street, run by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, has an urgent treatment centre open from 8am to 8pm every day of the year, an assessment unit for older people, and physiotherapy on site. Its Cedar Ward has 21 beds for frailty, rehabilitation and end-of-life care. What the town does not have is an emergency department: for that, the nearest is Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, run by Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust.

So the honest question is: with all of that nearby, why would you need us?

Because the hospital is where the operation happens, and home is where the recovery happens. A hip replacement, a knee, a fractured wrist or hip — the surgery takes a morning. The rebuilding takes weeks, and almost all of it happens in your own house. A hospital ward, however good, does nothing for you at week three, when you still cannot manage your own stairs and the exercise sheet is on the kitchen table.

Outpatient physiotherapy is the other half of it. It exists, and it is good, but it means getting there — to Swan Street, or down the A3 to Cosham — and parking, on a leg or a hip that is not ready for any of that. For a lot of older people the journey is harder than the treatment, and appointments get missed for exactly that reason.

Community therapy at home comes through Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and needs a referral from a health professional. Worth knowing: that trust was formed on 1 October 2024 from Southern Health and Solent NHS Trust, so you may still see either of the old names on letters, leaflets and older websites. It is the same service.

Where there is council support, it comes through Hampshire County Council's Reablement service. It is free, it includes occupational therapists, and it is capped at six weeks. We continue the work after that, or from the start if reablement was never part of the picture, for as long as it's genuinely helping and alongside anything the NHS already has in place.

Your first visit lasts 60 minutes or more, and treatment starts on the day: we talk through your health and what you’re finding hard, agree your goals, look at how you move, and leave you with exercises and a plan.

There’s no set course. About 1 in 4 of our clients need just one visit, and about half need three or fewer.

Petersfield has a community hospital of its own, with an urgent treatment centre open every day of the year. That is fortunate, and it is worth saying first.

It is also older than England as a whole. Across the town's four wards, 24.4 per cent of people are aged 65 or over, against 18.4 per cent for England, and across East Hampshire the figure is 23.1 per cent. Cedar Ward has 21 rehabilitation beds for the town and the countryside around it, and there is no emergency department nearer than Cosham.

That is who a home visit is for. A fall at home, a new hip, a spell in hospital that leaves someone weaker than when they went in — and a family, often living some distance away, trying to arrange help quickly.

And running through all of it is the same point. A hospital ward, however good, does nothing for you at week three of a hip replacement, when the exercises are on the kitchen table and nobody has watched you try your own stairs. That is the bit we do.