If so, tell me what they are so I can suggest them to my surgery?
This is long-winded but I am feeling frustrated. Pre-Covid, if you wanted an on-the day appointment you called at either 8 or 2 and they would try to fit you in. If you wanted a non-urgent appointment, these could be booked up to 6 weeks in advance.
DD has possible bladder issues. It's not urgent but I wanted it investigated. Getting an appointment at my surgery now involves being on the phone at 8.30 am for as long as it takes. Not ideal if you work as a primary school teacher. They do sometimes seem to offer advance-booked, non-urgent appointments outside of that time but not several weeks in advance like they did before and it is hit-amd miss whether anything will be on offer. I was in luck one day after school when I phoned up and managed to get a nurse-practitioner appointment for a few days later, outside school hours. All good.
The nurse asked us to complete a bladder diary and then make a new appointment to discuss the findings. She said it would be hard to complete at school so I agreed to carry it out over half term, which we had this week. I popped into the surgery last Friday afternoon and enquired about the follow-up appointment. Appointments for the following week were not yet released so I was told to try again Tuesday. I called up Tuesday, waited 20 minutes in the queue then was cut off as soon as I reached the front. I went into the surgery instead. Now nurse practitioner appointments cannot be advance-booked (even though my previous one was) so I have to call on the day at 8.30 to make an appointment. They suggested trying Friday. So I duly call up this morning at 8.30. If there are more than 10 people in the queue, you just get the engaged signal. I tried several times before I finally got through to queue position number 10. At 9.45 I eventually got to speak to someone. However, they are busy today and can't see anyone for a non-urgent appointment and said I will have to call Monday morning. I explained I couldn't as we are both teachers and it's impossible to call at that time. To be fair to the receptionist, she did try to find solutions but it was either a call between 1 and 3 on Tuesday afternoon (when I am alone with a class of 6 year olds and can't really pick up the phone) or get someone else to call for me Monday morning (who can speak to the doctor about my daughter's bladder other than me or her father?).
Eventually I did manage to arrange for an out of hours call next Sunday with a weekend GP. Obviously better than nothing but it would have been much more helpful to see the same nurse practitioner that I have already spent time explaining the rather complicated issue to. And there is no specified time for the call. Could be any time Sunday.
I have heard e-consult mentioned several times on here so I filled out the online comments form for my surgery asking if there might be plans to adopt it and explaining how unworkable the phone system is for people who don't have constant access to a phone, but no, they do not plan to introduce anything like that. No other surgeries in my town.
I know there is huge pressure on the GP system at the moment and no plans from government to address it, but does anyone have a GP whose system does seem to work well?