This again! Becoming almost impossible to make a GP appointment. Surgeries system restricted even further...

[PunishmentRoundupWithJoon]

Just a rant.

When my GP surgery introduced the online system for making appointments (and it's not even that, it's a system whereby you give your details and then you're triaged - someone may call you or you may receive a text) it was at least available 24/7, and at weekends. It was then changed to a cut off time of 8pm. So if you were planning to do the online consult once you'd finally sat down after the kids were in bed - forget it.

Tried to make an appointment yesterday to find they've now narrowed it even further with a cut off point of 12 noon. So patients only have four hours (8-12am) of this service.

They really are committed to making it as difficult as possible to make an appointment, aren't they? And god knows what you're supposed to do if you don't have access to the internet!

I realise this has been done to death but just had to rant about it. I used to think my surgery was one of the 'good' ones, even after the online system was introduced but now, not so much. Not that it will make a blind bit of difference but will be emailing the practice manager (who won't give a shit, I'm sure) but as someone with medical issues that mean mornings are rarely seen and if they are, I'm unable to function, I'm quite worried about these further restrictions.

It's exactly that. Otherwise practices come in on Monday morning to literally hundreds of eConsults. It could take all the GPs in the practice all day on Monday to deal with them, and still not have them done.

Our surgery has an on-line system, to request an appointment, describing what the issue is, or a repeat prescription etc. Calls back are 48 hrs.

It seems to work fine. The two occasions in the last year I have really needed to see someone urgently, once when ds had fallen and was bleeding badly and the local a&e was closed, and once when I'd had sudden weird symptoms after cancer treatment, we were seen within an hour. Me by a GP and him by the practice nurse.

We haven't ever had appointments or phone calls after 6pm (rural practice).

Mine did this a few months ago.

I had to wait until Easter holidays to do it. Did it the first day the system was open.

It took 3.5 weeks for them to respond.

Oh and they also have a queue system on the phone whereby once you've been through all the options of the queue is over the number of people it cuts you off.

Could you not fill out form prior and then set an alarm for when the system opens and send the pre-completed form in? know you're at work but that would take 5 seconds, to stop the alarm and then press submit.

Also, the person that doesn't use bathroom for 8 hours - that is really bad for you. I appreciate you're busy at work but please take 3 mins out to void bladder, you must be seriously dehydrated.

Ours now has a system called Patches
Anyone used this yet?

Ours open at 8am but seem to have a limit now, this week I tried at 8.10am and was told it was now full and closed for the day and to try tomorrow.

Ours is 8 til 4 mon to thurs and 8 til 12 on fri, that means shut off from 12 midway Fri and not open again until 8 mon morning. I phoned yesterday as been waiting for some medication that the hospital want me to have (26 days now) and they asked me why I didn’t get a prescription from the hospital appt, they got a bit shitty when I said because the hospital appt was a telephone appt and they were writing to GP to sort it out! So crappy hospital telephone appt, crappy econsult service, crappy receptionist attitude, crappy service all round tbh. Still waiting for call back and prescription!

There are so many people who are restricted by these ludicrous hours, be it fill out a form between the hours of 8 and 12 or hang on the phone for an hour at 8.30. I'm a teacher and it's just impossible. As it must be for supermarket staff, bus drivers etc.

“I warn you that you will have pain–when healing and relief depend upon payment.
“I warn you that you will have ignorance–when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right.
“I warn you that you will have poverty–when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay.
“I warn you that you will be cold–when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford.”

Many thanks to all the fools that could not hear or understand and refused to listen.

It will be due to then not having the capacity to look through all the forms in an appropriate time if people have been submitting over the weekend / overnight. Also I expect people will be using them for urgent things which puts the doctors in a vulnerable position if the form isn’t read / actioned quickly. They’ll be prioritising making the system safe and defensible because resources are increasingly directed to fire-fighting rather than accessible good quality care.
I’m a GP and so glad I’m on maternity leave this year - last year was horrific and I was at a well run, relatively well staffed practice (not now with two of us off on mat leave and the manager has left with burnout). They’ve changed the system a few times in the 4 months I’ve been off, I imagine there’s just no way to match the demand and supply so like most they’re just chasing the least dangerous option.

I had to talk with the 3 main surgeries in our town in an official capacity about exactly this issue.

There are a number of reasons

• lack of funding
• doctors wanting to "keep people out of the surgery"
• the vast majority of GPs work part time now
• patients have very different needs and expectations particularly after covid

But is it is much easier just to say blame the government when the truth is far more complex

No, because the system does not allow you access to the form outside the hours during which you can submit it.

Ours is also terrible. The only communication there seems to be are terse messages on the village Facebook group that people shouldn’t try going into the surgery to make an appointment in person. If you aren’t able to be sitting on the phone at 8.30am sharp, you’ve got no chance.

I’d write to my MP but my MP is Liz Truss - she’d no doubt regard this as a stunning success for Tory policy. I haven’t bothered writing to her for years, because what is the point? You’d get more sense out of the lettuce!

If this was the case 5 years ago I would have been dead and I am not joking, I had been to A&E with a condition that had not got better, I had seen my GP a few days before who said I had a virus, I was kicked out of A&E by a triage nurse who told me to see my GP again, I got an emergency appointment next day, when my GP saw me he was visibly shocked at how much I had deteriorated since he last saw sent me straight back to A&E turns out I had SEPSIS and they caught it just in time, imagine what would have happened if instead of seeing a GP who saw how ill I was I just had a phone appointment, no visual examination no seeing how much weight I had lost? I would most probably be dead by now

When surgeries restrict access it's an emergency measure on their part, not because they want to serve their patients badly. I work in a related field, and we just don't have the staff, so keep having to make further restrictions. Clients get angry, we explain about staffing, they say "that's not my problem". It's hellish. No one wants to deliver a rubbish service, but what's the alternative? I'm tempted to tell the angry clients to train as healthcare professionals themselves if they feel so strongly about it, or at least vote in a different government!

@Totallysinking ”part time” GP work is the equivalent of a full time job hours- wise. Most GPs work in a practice “part time” because the alternative is burnout and walking away completely and, the vast majority of us, we believe in the NHS and want to help our patients. Most GPs also do other work, whether that is out of hours, specialist interest clinics, medical student/GP trainee teaching.

I find it so insulting that I am looked down upon for working “part time”. I work 3 days a week, minimum 12 hour days, with CPD and meetings done in my own time so I stay up to date for my patients. My pay reflects my “part time” hours, to be frank I earned more in a private company 15 years ago. I have a 1 year old and a husband who also works similar hours. I am this close to quitting and the vast majority of my colleagues are too.

That's terrible. A lot of people's work, mine included, would not facilitate this. Oh hang on children, teach yourselves while I answer my phone! Discriminates against so many people.

I live in Wales, where Welsh Government has NHS responsibility and its just as bad, if not worse here.

My GP surgery does not offer online anything. No e-consult, no online triage. The ONLY way of getting an appointment is to phone between 9am and 5pm, and sit in a queue for up to 40 minutes.

And I am in Scotland - health is devolved and it's equally bad here.

Where I live they are so many new builds but no infrastructure to support them. Everybody is signing up to the one surgery. However for every new patient signing up, the surgery is allocated money so they should be employing more people.

There is a chronic shortage of GPs, unless we accept the downgrading of healthcare provision and replace qualified GPs with PAs and the like (which is bloody dangerous) then where are they going to magic these additional staff from? I think a lot are blissfully ignorant to the unfolding major issues across the NHS in regards to doctors. The government know full well but won't address the issues, so sadly it's going to get worse, Labour don't appear to have any decent workable plans either.

Erm well for me, the hours I can fill the form in are 8-12.
I work then, with Send children who won't just sit and watch whilst I fill in a form for ten minutes. I get a break but it's cancelled if a child goes into crisis...which is often. Not insurmountable but also not easy to "just" fill the form in.
I'd love to know why you can't fill and submit the form in your own time on the understanding that it gets read between 8-12 that would make sense.

Btw there are many, many people who have busy, demanding jobs where they can't just sit down in the middle of a shift to fill in a ten minute form so you comment is extremely lacking in empathy.

Mine is ring at 8am, on the day appointments only. More than 12 people in the queue and it hangs up on you
If you don't get through you have to wait until the next day
Yes, I'm changing doctors