[Closed] Does you GP surgery offer online appointment booking?

I suspect that you get more non-it literate folk attending the docs than average.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't encourage it, but the assisted digital users would probably end up back on the phone or attending in person with a potential perception that the IT savvy punters get a better service.

It's not right, but I wouldn't want to be involved with *that* transformation initiative.

Yes.

Still a 2 week wait on the scheduling, so you still have to plan ahead to be ill...

No idea about online, but it's always has two modes, phone up at exactly 8.30am and get an appointment that day, or phone up after 8.32 and you get a booking with a min 3 weeks wait.

In theory it's offered. In practice when I've looked there are never any appointments available.

Sounds like you are on the same system as us. Completely useless isn't it. Don't know about anyone else, but the only time I use the docs is when I get proper sick. So an appointment 2 weeks away ain't much use.

I spend almost every working day in practices, not long in the waiting room but very generally, the average person you see in a GP waiting room looks unlikely to be comfortable using an online booking system. Not all patients, at all practices, but most.

Two (guess-based!) things to add on to that - I think practices .would regard appointments booked online as low urgency, hence the low percentage of appointments at your GP that they've allocated to online bookings, if it's urgent, you pick up the phone, if it's REALLY urgent you call 999. The second guess is that GPs don't actually want to be THAT accessible - their time is massively in demand (over-subscribed is the phrase that springs to mind) and expensive. I'm sure there's no coherent, clearly-stated plan to make them less accessible, but I can imagine that they would want to limit access to GP time for people that haven't been vetted in some form by a reception team that can filter out the utterly spurious demands on a GP's time.

The hell am I posting for? There's GPs on here, aren't there? 🙂

Yes it does, It's usually ok.

No idea on the %age of available is low, but I could get an appointment to see a doctor next week (Tuesday) and my doctor on Wednesday.

It's done through this lot: www.patient-services.co.uk/

Two (guess-based!) things to add on to that – I think practices .would regard appointments booked online as low urgency, hence the low percentage of appointments at your GP that they’ve allocated to online bookings, if it’s urgent, you pick up the phone, if it’s REALLY urgent you call 999. The second guess is that GPs don’t actually want to be THAT accessible – their time is massively in demand (over-subscribed is the phrase that springs to mind) and expensive. I’m sure there’s no coherent, clearly-stated plan to make them less accessible, but I can imagine that they would want to limit access to GP time for people that haven’t been vetted in some form by a reception team that can filter out the utterly spurious demands on a GP’s time.

I can see the logic in making people work a bit harder for their appointment will weed out some less needy cases when the resources are finite. It will also weed out busy working people who a already reluctant to go but who probably need to. The system ours uses has a 30 character box to fill in to describe the issue with a get out clause that says they may cancel or downgrade the appointment to a nurse visit if they assess the issue as not worth a doctor appointment.

Controversial but GP visit here are chargeable ($30-50 so 15-30 quid). I was outraged at taking a credit card to the doctors at first having been brought up with the free at point of use NHS but it seems to work at reducing demand, you don't pay for any further healthcare after that (unless it's elective) and low-income/benefits recipients plus children are still free.

Yup, use it all the time.  Also, and as someone with a chronic medical condition (Type 1 diabetes in my case) I need repeat prescriptions every three or four weeks, being able to submit requests for them online is a godsend.  Can normally get an appointment within a week, often less.

I wonder if GP practices in Scotland might be ahead of the game on this..?

I've only used on-line appointments once (the last time I needed to see my GP, a while ago) but seemed pretty good. Looking at the surgery web-site it doesn't say the %age of online appointments just that not all appointments are available online so that those without Internet access aren't disadvantaged (fair enough) and that the allocation is regularly reviewed and adjusted - it does sound more like your surgery doesn't actively manage that side of the business.

It will also weed out busy working people who a already reluctant to go but who probably need to.

If you're not sure whether to go or not, I would imagine your GP will be perfectly happy to see someone who feels they really DO need to dee a doctor instead.

it does sound more like your surgery doesn’t actively manage that side of the business.

That's another aspect - you'd be surprised at the difference in how different surgeries handle the same processes.

Slightly OT but the whole GP system is at serious risk of breaking.

Mrs S is a GP.  Due to retirements they have gone down from 11 to 8 partners. They simply can't recruit despite being a well regarded, well managed and profitable practice. My wife's list size has increased by 900 patients. Her stress levels are up through the roof due to sheer volume and she is actively looking for an out, working in private medicine or management / strategy type work. If she leaves, it places even more pressure on her partners and the cycle continues.

GP's are consultants yet people expect to see them for everything, you wouldn't see a consultant in hospital for a sore finger or heavy cold so why expect to see one in GP?  There needs to be improved triage and better use of nurse practitioners and AMP's.  There also needs to be better use of tech, telephones, online etc.  But, even that is skirting around the edges.  GP as a career needs to be encouraged from the first year of medical school with attractive training schemes in place.

GP's are the absolute backbone of the NHS but there is a serious crisis looming without any real plan in place to address this.

If you’re not sure whether to go or not, I would imagine your GP will be perfectly happy to see someone who feels they really DO need to see a doctor instead.

To be honest I think that is a bit of a short sighted attitude. To give an example of a work colleague. A 60 year old bloke with slightly embarrassing symptoms. His wife had been nagging him for weeks to go to see the GP and he was very reluctant. Incredibly common amongst men apparently. He (we) can't have a mobile phone at work or use work phone for personal calls. Combined with our hours (and the fact that the surgery closes it's phone line for the receptionists lunch so you can't ring during work yourself) making an appointment when still well enough to work is not easy. Not being able to make an appointment easily would for someone like him be another excuse not to see the doctor. In the end he was persuaded to go, did have bowel cancer but fortunately he was seen just in time that it was not terminal. He did have two major operations, chemo and a year of work all told. In purely economic let alone human terms you need to get guys like him in front of a GP with as little fuss as possible.

We have online booking and I could have an appointment on Friday if I wanted.

Our doctors are absolutely brilliant and we would never move out of their catchment area.

As I sat in the waiting room on Monday I was able to watch the goslings following mum around the garden . A nice environment leads to nice people.

We have it, but like mentioned above, you tend to have to plan a long way in advance. What tends to happen is you make an appointment in 2 weeks then end up cancelling it as you feel better/have been to the drop in centre/have made an appointment over the phone as it's more urgent than that.

I get that a lot of people who use the docs won't feel comfortable using the app to make appointments, but for those that do it does feel like a half hearted solution.

Yes, there is an online system - but last time I looked you could only book weeks in advance.

That said, ring up and they usually fit you in the same day so I've no complaints at all.

I need repeat prescriptions every three or four weeks, being able to submit requests for them online is a godsend.

Just give it to your local pharmacy, they handle the whole thing, ordering the repeat automatically, collecting the prescription from your surgery. I just get a text from Boots saying your prescription is ready for collection and pop in on my way home from work to collect it.

GPs in England have been tasked/incentivised for a number of years to provide online patient-facing services such as appointment booking and prescription requesting.  There are a range of systems available to do this which range from the very user friendly and slick to the downright clunky. I suspect NHS digital will amalgamate everyone onto their own solution in the future.

It's a difficult balancing act for practices to do well:

They have to configure what appointment availability to provide online, over what timeframe.  Balancing the need to make access easier against ever increasing demand, reducing GP resources (as per the GPs under pressure post above) and the current situation that online appointments would (on average) be taken up by the younger, worried-well, leaving less appointments for practices to care for the older, less-well population.

Technology has to have a significant part to play in making the NHS fit for purpose with an increasingly ageing popn without growing the costs beyond what people are prepared to pay in taxes (disgraceful that an honest conversation about this wasn't held by politicians at the last election imho).

There's tinkering around the edges such as the access systems, text message notifications but no significant developments that transform the system to deal effectively and cheaply with the minor stuff to free up resource for more serious cases.  AI shows some promise and could with more development and clinical evidence take on the triage role in the coming years (when the expensive older generation are tech-literate). The current 111 triage algorithms are too medico-legally risk-averse to be effective at reducing demand.

Some companies have made progress with this such as Babylon, but in developing their tech, they're burning through significant cash and the investors want their return asap. The NHS quite rightly uses solutions with an evidence base, but it is very slow to pilot/adopt technology and as a result Babylon and others have gone into competition with the wider NHS by providing private GP services or partnering with one NHS GP partnership and then acquiring patients from a wide geography (unless you have anything serious) which disrupts the general practice model of care and funding.

Solutions need to be found and implemented though as there's not much stretch in the system before the GP model breaks and we all have to start going private......and before some people start shouting that's what should happen, look at the US healthcare costs (with generally worse outcomes) for a STW tyical family for a reality check!

I have just registered with a gp. I said yes to online bookings and prescription.

6 emails to activate the system. All they systems are separate. Polly organised imo.

Add to this a phone booking system that you can only book non emergency appointments 1 week or 3 weeks advance to the day so if you can't phone at 08:30 on the week before you want a appointment you can't get a appointment.

While I am at it a form full of double negatives and unclear statement requing you to agree and disagree it seems the people doing the organisation and admin are utterly useless. Must be exadmin people who worked at my company as they love making simple tasks inefficient and complicated.

Surely it's beyond the realms of technology to have a shared calendar that both the receptionists & online bookers can access?

Just give it to your local pharmacy, they handle the whole thing, ordering the repeat automatically, collecting the prescription from your surgery.

All the surgeries in our town stopped allowing chemists to order repeat prescriptions earlier this year.

Just give it to your local pharmacy, they handle the whole thing, ordering the repeat automatically, collecting the prescription from your surgery. I just get a text from Boots saying your prescription is ready for collection and pop in on my way home from work to collect it.

Local pharmacy is several miles away so why create extra work for myself and Boots when I can do it all electronically!  The text system from Boots is great.

All the surgeries in our town stopped allowing chemists to order repeat prescriptions earlier this year.

Did they say why, seems like a brilliant scheme to me.

To be honest I think that is a bit of a short sighted attitude. To give an example of a work colleague. A 60 year old bloke with slightly embarrassing symptoms. His wife had been nagging him for weeks to go to see the GP and he was very reluctant. Incredibly common amongst men apparently. He (we) can’t have a mobile phone at work or use work phone for personal calls. Combined with our hours (and the fact that the surgery closes it’s phone line for the receptionists lunch so you can’t ring during work yourself) making an appointment when still well enough to work is not easy. Not being able to make an appointment easily would for someone like him be another excuse not to see the doctor. In the end he was persuaded to go, did have bowel cancer but fortunately he was seen just in time that it was not terminal. He did have two major operations, chemo and a year of work all told. In purely economic let alone human terms you need to get guys like him in front of a GP with as little fuss as possible.

That's fair enough, and I reiterate - I just pop into practices, I'm not a clinician, I don't even work in practice, so these are just my uneducated thinks. Did yer man book his appointment online?

Surely it’s beyond the realms of technology to have a shared calendar that both the receptionists & online bookers can access?

I think (might be wrong) a practice will say "these appointments at this time on these days are allocated to online, everything else to be booked on the blower". So they access the same calendar but some are marked as for online booking, some not.

Yes, but was mostly just weeks in advance but sometimes refreshing you'd get lucky with something this or next week. Tended to be a junior or locum though who are worse than useless unless you just want a reassuring/dismissive "it's probably nothing". Rarely ever managed to see my GP I'm registered with but if I can I'd stick with them as they seem to pay attention and will do a number of checks "just in case" and maybe also suggest "as you're X age now, maybe worth doing this or that test", rather than impatience and trying to get me out the door within a minute.

But, the online system has been "migrated" to some new system and now I have to get new log in details from them to register for the new system, which can't be done online. So I'm back to phoning up.

Given the ability to lose records sent between hospital and doctors and seeming lack of evidence of previous visits on their system, I don't have much faith in a new system.

I suspect NHS digital will amalgamate everyone onto their own solution in the future.

From what I understand there is a pot of money at the moment for them to do their own solutions for online bookings and online consultations and I don't know of any plans by NHS Digital to do their own just yet. We've just rolled out 20+ GP websites with 'some' online functionality but are more geared towards self-help and avoiding going into surgery altogether.