Viewing 35 posts - 1 through 35 (of 35 total)
  • NHS GP service, shambolic?
  • wilburt
    Free Member

    It seems increasingly difficult to see a GP, sort of understandable given the recent population increase but they don’t seem very efficient either which doesn’t help.

    Just trying today.

    Online booking says please ring reception, reception says online doesn’t work.
    Reception says I can’t pre book an appointment(until mid September)
    must ring every morning 8am until successful.
    I can’t get my records to go somewhere else without writing a letter and paying £50.
    Look to register somewhere else who direct me online to a registration process site that doesn’t work.
    They don’t answer the phone at all suggesting there as poor as the first practice.

    I’m sure all the people are lovely and hard working etc but the end result whatever the reason seems **** rubbish.

    Rant over

    hora
    Free Member

    I can ring and be offered an appointment within the day, often ‘can you come this morning’?

    This is a central Manchester surgery. I left the catchment area and they agreed to keep me on the books too.

    nickc
    Full Member

    It seems increasingly difficult to see a GP, sort of understandable given the recent population increase lack of GPs

    Is more like it TBH.

    Like everything else, GPs surgeries can be well run, or an utter shambles, you do seems to have run into a couple a really carp ones though 😆

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    globalti
    Free Member

    Are you in the south? My Mum in Wiltshire has exactly the same problem; she has to book a phone call and wait at home until the GP phones her.

    Up here in Lancs I can ring the surgery and see the GP the same afternoon.

    But don’t get me started on the attitude of certain GPs to older patients.

    allthegear
    Free Member

    GP Practices are the prime example of private business running part of the NHS. Get used to it.

    Rachel

    monkeysfeet
    Free Member

    Same problem in North Wales. Lack of GP’s plus increasing/ elderly population means a lack of appointments. We often struggle to get an appointment in 2 weeks. The surgery used to have a “phone in the morning” system but this has stopped too.

    aP
    Free Member

    If I want a GP appointment I find it easier and quicker to physically turn up at the surgery and ask when an appointment is available, but it is often difficult to anticipate illnesses so this is just for med certs or long-term issues. If there’s a pressing concern that I’d like to be looked at earlier than the typical GP appointment wait of 4-6 weeks then I go to a walk-in NHS clinic, where I’ll be seen that day.
    It’s difficult to to quite understand the reasons for all this, but all that I can say is that GP surgeries as they currently exist won’t be around for much longer as the process and service is clearly not fit for purpose.

    13thfloormonk
    Full Member

    Sounds very like my GP in Edinburgh.

    On the plus side, it has taught me to toughen up a bit and maybe sit out some weird trivial conditions (like a strange itchy rash behind my knee that didn’t go away for three months then just disappeared…) without wasting the NHS’s time.

    On the negative side I have just started paying for private physio as I don’t know how to access the NHS one any more, and have also sat out a weird illness that ticked all the boxes for pneumonia and probably merited a professional diagnosis, although it passed too after a couple of weeks In retrospect should probably have tried harder for an appointment on that one…

    woody74
    Full Member

    GPs surgeries are private businesses that in most places have a complete monopoly so they have no incentive to improve. There is no central coordination as how could they ever coordinate and create more private companies. Personally I have no problem with private businesses being part of the NHS but they must be centrally controlled and monitored. I appreciate the NHS is complicated but for the life of me I can not understand why it is structured the way it is. The only benefit I can see is that politicians in westminster can pass the buck when something goes wrong as they can say power has been devolved to the local area.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    Our place, you’ve to ring at 8:30 for an appointment. The phone system clicks over automatically from night service, so at 8:30 and 10 seconds you are at position 17 in the queue. The trick is to catch it on “press 1 for…” at the clock tick and jump the gun over the other war-diallers. Much past 8:40 and you’ve no chance, ring back tomorrow.

    hora
    Free Member

    They might be ‘private businesses’ but I’ve found (and when calling for an appointment for my son at his (close to my house) local GP that if you interact with the reception, speak as you would like to be soken to etc and not moan you get remembered. Maybe it’s just me but I struggle to remember a bad/long wait with any GP.

    I’m not saying that you do but I’ve heard the way some people speak in surgeries- almost as though the staff/GP is a servant(s). There purely to serve.

    woody74
    Full Member

    You have to wonder how long it will be until you can pay for a private GP service where you can just Skype or Facetime them.

    I bet 90% of things could be sorted in minutes and are obvious what the issue is. i.e. I fell off my bike and twisted my ankle. Answer, go and see a private physio as it will be much easier and quicker and you wont have to wait 6 weeks for a referral to then see someone that say “Oh yes you have a problem and need to see a physic, we will book you an appointment in 4 weeks time” By this time your ankle is backed and needs twice as much work to sort it out.

    MoreCashThanDash
    Full Member

    GP services are really struggling as far as I can tell. Pretty sure it is not the actual GPs themselves, but don’t understand it enough to pass comment.

    We have the ring at 8am farce as well – finally get through at 8.10 to be told all the appointments have gone and you should have called earlier. Online appointments work but you need to book 2-3 weeks in advance. Great when the GP says ” See me in two weeks” but you can’t get back in for three.

    I know our surgery has struggled with recruitment this year. Senior partner retired, two managed to break legs on separate skiing trips and that left just two GPs and a rotating pattern of locums.

    When I was signed off work with anxiety and depression earlier in the year I had an appointment with the GP who seemed in a worst state than me as she explained their staffing shortage. I commented that I could recommend the Citalopram and she got a fit of the giggles, so at least one of us came out of the consultation feeling better about themselves!

    cheshirecat
    Free Member

    You have to wonder how long it will be until you can pay for a private GP service where you can just Skype or Facetime them.

    Already here. Part of my (work provided) healthcare with Vitality. Not used it though.

    From the messages above it seems really patchy, and strongly depends where you live. No long waits here, generally same or next day.

    hammyuk
    Free Member

    Crap down here.
    Ring at 8am for “emergency appointments released in time order”. Gone by 8:15
    Want to see the GP? 4-6wks minimum – great when as mentioned above they ask to see you again in 2wks….
    Want a repeat scrip? Use the online service. Then have to go into the surgery anyway because the GP decided not to sign off all of it… despite it being a hospital TTO or acute so negating the use of the online service.
    Absolute waste of time here – 2 of the GP’s have between them over 150 ongoing complaints. Another has only been here a month and still isn’t taking appointments. The last one isn’t free until october!
    The only real way to see anyone is to use the Senior Nurse Practitioner. Usually that day or the following. However they can’t change a scrip or do a referral even if they diagnose an issue – you have to see the GP for that 🙄 so…….

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Its all a really good recipe for making sure stuff like cancer isn’t detected early isn’t.

    sort of understandable given the recent population increase

    Not really. I haven’t noticed the increased population meaning we have to queue round the block to get into the supermarket so it think its possible to have more people in a place and then deploy those people to make and provide the goods and services that those people need. More people means more people – doctors were a subset of ‘people’ the last time I checked.

    GPs surgeries are private businesses that in most places have a complete monopoly

    I’ve got a choice of 1 GP surgery or 5 veterinary surgeries. Sometime I wonder if it would be more convenient to just settle for the guy with the wellies and the elbow length rubber gloves.

    allthepies
    Free Member

    Mine’s pretty good if you use the online booking system and know when’s best to check it for new appointments.

    chrismac
    Full Member

    Because GPs are private businesses and not part of the NHS they range from the really good to the completely hopeless shambles. It amazes me that we will rely on thousands of small cottage businesses to provide healthcare in the 21st century

    DrP
    Full Member

    As a GP running a (hopefully) well received practice, all I can unfortunately say is that you/we’ve never had it so good…

    Stay healthy, or get good private insurance.

    Seriously.

    Thought I think the NHS is great, it’s overused and wildly under funded.
    Morale and recruitment in primary care is at an all time low.
    Simply put, though you may feel your practice has a ‘monopoly’ on local healthcare, they may simply feel like they are drowning without support.
    Difficulty recruiting, alongside increasing pressure and costs, has lead to two local practices closing.

    How are the surrounding practices meant to cope?
    Yes- that’s another £130 per year to provide all the contracted health needs of those new patients. But ask these surgeries and they’d be begging to close their lists.

    Your five vets get paid £80 cash, by you,to give a cat £5 worth of antibiotic.

    Based on that return, and the number of patient contracts your typical gp has, if primary care was paid for by you in the same way as a poorly moggy was, they’d be lining up to start new practices stacked five high….

    By all means complain. But to your mp and nhs England…

    I give it 8 years before you switch your £300 a year from sky tv to pills and expert advice.. 😉

    DrP

    matt_outandabout
    Full Member

    My GP’s in Dunblane is being brilliant – it takes a few days for most appointments, some a week. Emergency same day appointments are always available, including ‘sit and wait’. They are even calling me at the moment to book appointments.

    fifeandy
    Free Member

    Another one with the 8am farce here.
    If you REALLY need an appointment need to go actually get in the receptionists face at 8am.

    Loads of mistakes with some (admittedly unusual) prescriptions, not recognising symptoms are related to long running medical condition etc etc.

    Overall find it hard to understand. You need to be really smart to be a GP, but sometimes you are just left scratching head.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    Terrible in Surrey and Hampshire. Similar stories of delays and inability to get an appointment other than emergency with a nominated doctor. Labour significantly increased spending on GPs but it hasn’t worked

    Rachel there is private involvement in all the health services I have used (France, Switzerland, US, Singapore) and they are all superior to the UK. I particularly like the French system where the government sets a fixed fee for an appointment, if you see the state they pay him that amount, if you see a private doctor the state refunds that fixed anount to you unlike the UK where you (or your insurance) has to cover the whole thing.

    Inbred456
    Free Member

    Do not ring in. In our Surgery there is a queue of people waiting in the waiting room for an appointment. Once these are given appointments they answer the phone and say all the appointments are taken can you ring back tomorrow! I guess the same thing happens the following day. Crazy!

    dragon
    Free Member

    Although they are ‘private’ they aren’t really not in the same way a vet, dentist or optician are. Arguably GPs have the worst of both public and private models. Personally I think there should be more competition between the surgeries and they be allowed to sell extra services, but i suspect that is not going to be a popular view.

    Also why are they so dire at paperwork? The amount of things that go missing or are incorrectly communicated is scary.

    timidwheeler
    Free Member

    My GP is generally ok for emergency appointments. I’ve had to wait more than three months for my physio referral though. The NHS physio is also a private company.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    GPs are in melt down really. Over subscribed and under funded, despite the seemingly high salaries GPs actually get. The practices are not funded well. Under a lot of pressure and to meet targets they have strict limits to how long they can consult with patients which is not long enough to diagnose anything properly.

    With so much demand the chances of getting an appointment within a month or two is slim. Emergency appointments are like gold dust and filled up by hypochondriacs and the elderly who think they’re dying, especially after a weekend.

    To cope they use locum doctors who frankly from my experience don’t have a clue. Though GPs aren’t experts either, hence the name *General* Practitioner. To be fair though they are what they are and that’s front line filter for trivial conditions. If you can get to see one, in most cases it’s basically listen to the patient, be reassuring and prescribe a treatment that may as well be a placebo as the patient just wants a prescription. Most of the time whatever it was will go away on its own.

    Sadly the old NHS Direct was scrapped and replaced by call centre monkeys without a clue. They used to be staffed by nurses who could diagnose reasonably well over the phone and advise at home treatment or to actually go to a GP or hospital. Now they’re just reading from the computer and send people to the wrong place or give out poor advice, overloading the system even more.

    Best option for minor conditions I’ve found is a local walk in centre if you’ve got one. Sadly the government keeps trying to get rid of these too, even though they’re ideal to keep the load off A&E and quicker to see than a GP.

    GP records are a farce. The number of times I’ve been and ended up seeing someone different again, I mention something I’d been to see them before about and they have no record of it. Same with trips to A&E and fracture clinics, x-rays and so on that I was assured would be sent to my GP and yet no record of it. Problem there is we were supposed to have had a centralised database for patient records and sharing between NHS facilities, but this was strongly objected to plus the system proposed was garbage so ultimately scrapped. Now we’re back to sticking things in the post and records getting lost.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    If I want to see a gp here in Oz it will cost me anything from 10 to 50 quid depending on where I go (that’s on top of what the government pays them) I can get appointments when I need them (very infrequently) is that the system you want?

    br
    Free Member

    Because GPs are private businesses and not part of the NHS they range from the really good to the completely hopeless shambles. It amazes me that we will rely on thousands of small cottage businesses to provide healthcare in the 21st century

    But they always have, this isn’t a new thing.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan

    After 18 months of ongoing dispute between the Ministry of Health and the BMA, Bevan finally managed to win over the support of the vast majority of the medical profession by offering a couple of minor concessions, but without compromising on the fundamental principles of his National Health Service proposals. Bevan later gave the famous quote that, to broker the deal, he had “stuffed their mouths with gold”.

    When we lived in a busy urban area it always seemed a real problem to get a GP appointment, but now we live rural it doesn’t. Not me though, I’ve probably had three visits in 10 years – just an observation based on the rest of the family.

    wilburt
    Free Member

    Its not about what they do in other countries, I’m sure there would be good and bad comparisons.

    The frustration here is the inefficiency of the system. I made four phone calls yesterday taking up someones time and the outcome is need to ring again on Monday to book an appointment at another surgery which only takes booking for that week!

    Thats five phone calls to make an appointment, any commercial service provider would be in meltdown an soon bust with that kind of contact rate.

    From my limited experience (an GP visit every few years) a half decent multi channel contact system just like you get with BT, Sky or whoever would soon have surgery staff twiddling their fingers with spare time.

    FuzzyWuzzy
    Full Member

    My surgery’s OK, it used to be to get an appointment (same day) you turned up in the morning and asked at reception (or phoned but you had a better chance by being there in person as phone was usually engaged). One the one hand this was good as you had a decent chance of getting a same day (phoning later in the day for a standard slot usually meant you had to wait a couple of weeks to be seen as each GP only had a very limited amount of standard appointment slots each day). However it also meant a big queue of sick people waiting outside the surgery from 7:30am (they opened at 8am), so probably not the best idea for containing flu/colds etc. (and crap if you’re in a really bad way).

    Now they’ve changed it so on the day appointments are for emergencies only and you can only phone up before 9am to get one but they’ve also freed up most of the GP’s day for standard appointments so booking online or phoning you can usually be seen in 2-5 days for a non-emergency appointment which is fine by me.

    anagallis_arvensis
    Full Member

    I always thought the phone on the morning at 9am bollocks (tricky if your teaching) was so that they were able to meet waiting time targets. If you cant get an appointment you cant be waiting.

    wilburt
    Free Member

    I host a conference call at 8am every morning so it doesn’t work for me either.

    To avoid doubt this definitely NOT a moan at the people who provide the service, I suspect its even more frustrating for you.

    johni
    Free Member

    I often ask for a phone consultation with my GP as I can’t get an appointment without the usual 8.30 phone wait for disappointment. When I do get to the surgery, I’m pretty sure at least half of the people there have a cold and “need antibiotics” which will do absolutely nothing for it.

    jonba
    Free Member

    We have the 8am thing too, pretty std wherever I’ve been. I thought that was down to government targets to reduce waiting time. You’re not waiting if you are not booked in. It also reduces the number of no shows. If you know your GP then it can help. E.g. mine has slots on a Monday night till 7pm. They are not booked out as routine so only go to those who can’t make normal hours or who otherwise missed a slot.

    From talking to GP friends a lot of the problems lie with the “patients”. People who shouldn’t be going in to see their GP taking up time. You could do what they do in Australia and put a flat charge on visits but that has complications.

    There are plenty of other systems available from other countries but on balance the NHS is probably one of the better. Sure in some places you’ll get seen faster or be able to book but that is probably because you have private insurance – those not as fortunate will get something far worse.

    One thing I’d like to see is more walk in centres. Our local A+E does everything. You see a triage nurse who then directs you to a nurse to patch you up, a doctor to examine you further and refer you to the right department or a GP to deal with other problems – should probably employ some councillors too as I understand plenty of people just like to chat to their GP.

    davidr
    Full Member

    The problem with my GP isn’t necessarily getting an appointment (although I seldom have anything very urgent). It’s them continually running late. How on earth they can be upwards of 20 minutes late at 9am after an 8.30 start I don’t understand. I appreciate that some appointments do take longer than the allotted 10 minutes but this is every time I go there. My girlfriend was delayed by 40 minutes at a 9am appointment one day!

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