Home visit route planning, step by step
Updated October 8, 2026 · 3 min read
Plan home visit routes in two passes. First decide which clinician can take each visit, based on skills, working hours and the patient's time window; then order each clinician's stops so every visit starts inside its window with the least driving.
What every route has to respect
Home visit routing is the vehicle routing problem with health care rules added. A 2025 review of the research lists the usual ones: visit time windows, matching each visit to a clinician with the right skills, visits that need two clinicians at once, breaks, limits on working hours, tasks that must happen in a set order, and continuity of care.
- Time windows: the earliest and latest time a visit can start. A hard window must be met; a soft window can slip at a cost.
- Skills: an infusion visit needs a clinician qualified to give it.
- Hours and breaks: the route has to finish before the shift ends, with breaks included.
- Order: a pharmacy delivery may have to arrive before the nurse who gives the dose.
- Continuity: keeping the same clinician with the same patient. Published models treat it as a soft goal, while legal working hours, qualifications and required windows are hard limits.
How to build the day
- 1
List the visits
For each visit, record the address, the time window, the expected length and the skill it needs. Flag visits that need two clinicians or must follow a delivery.
- 2
Assign clinicians
Give each visit to a clinician who has the skill and the hours left in the shift.
- 3
Order the stops
Place the visits with the tightest windows first, then fit visits with wide windows into the gaps. Use drive time between stops, not straight-line distance.
- 4
Check every arrival
Add drive and visit times stop by stop. Each visit must start inside its window; if the clinician arrives early, the plan includes the wait. The last stop has to finish before the shift ends.
- 5
Recheck after every change
A cancellation or an added visit moves every later arrival, so recalculate the rest of the day from that point.
Worked example: five visits
A nurse leaves the office at 07:40 with five visits (fictional patients A to E). This order meets every window.
| Stop | Window | Arrive | Start | Visit | Leave | Drive to next |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 08:00 to 09:00 | 08:00 | 08:00 | 30 min | 08:30 | 15 min |
| B | 08:30 to 12:00 | 08:45 | 08:45 | 45 min | 09:30 | 20 min |
| C | 10:00 to 11:00 | 09:50 | 10:00 | 30 min | 10:30 | 10 min |
| D | 09:00 to 15:00 | 10:40 | 10:40 | 60 min | 11:40 | 25 min |
| E | 12:00 to 14:00 | 12:05 | 12:05 | 30 min | 12:35 | 20 min to office |
The nurse is back at the office at 12:55 after 110 minutes of driving, 195 minutes of visits and 10 minutes of waiting at C. Now move D up to second place, because it is only 10 minutes from A, and keep the rest in order. The nurse reaches D at 08:40, waits for its window to open at 09:00, leaves at 10:00, finishes B at 11:00 and reaches C at 11:20, after C's window closed at 11:00. Pulling one nearby stop forward broke a window two stops later.
Where software helps
By hand, this works for one clinician. Across a team, each choice of who goes where changes every route, and the possible plans grow too fast to check one by one, so routing tools use heuristics: methods that find good plans quickly without testing every option.
Capillary's routing, shown as a demo, plans home visits for clinicians, couriers and equipment around visit windows, skills and travel time. See Capillary for hospital-at-home programs, or see how this route takes a same-day add-on visit.
Common questions
- How many home visits can one clinician do in a day?
- It depends on visit length, drive time and how the windows line up, so add them up for the actual day. In the example above, five visits took 5 hours 15 minutes, including 110 minutes of driving.
- Should routes be planned by distance or by drive time?
- By drive time. Visit windows are clock times, so the plan needs the minutes between stops, and a short distance on slow streets can take longer than a longer fast road.
- What is the difference between assignment and routing?
- Assignment decides which clinician sees which patient; routing sets the order and times of each clinician's visits. The two can be solved together or in sequence. The dispatch vs. routing glossary defines the related terms.
Plan home visits around windows, skills and drive time.
Capillary's routing module plans the day for clinicians, couriers and equipment. See it with sample data.