To want back my old out of hours doctor service?

[TheScreamingfrog]

Aaaaaargh! Am fuming at this stupid 111 service. DD has what I strongly suspect to be a chest infection, worsened this evening and now spiking temperatures of 40. Thought I would be sensible and do things the right way..... Silly me.

Was told would get a call in an hour from a doctor. Hour and a half later no call so I call again to be told it has been passed over to the doctor and to hold for a call. Another hour - diddly so phone again and rant to be to,d it's not their fault it's the doctors fault. Doctor calls me and tells me we need to see a doctor - I fucking well know that or I would not have called!! Someone will call me to arrange an appt. That was over 20 minutes ago. Should have just gone to A&E in the first place and had 2.9 yr old dd safely in bed by now.

Any one else had any experience with this service? The old one would have called me straight back and told me where the nearest ooh clinic was.

I hear you.

DH's sore throat became dreadful over the weekend. Couldn't swallow his saliva, temp of 39 etc.

I called 111 on 7 different occasions and just got no answer despite being on the phone for 20 mins each time. Just ridiculous

Our GP's are furious about it. We are lucky, we have a fab surgery that is really accommodating and so DH was seen first thing Monday morning and given AB's etc.

Very annoying when the original OOH's service appeared to work perfectly well.

hope your DD is on the mend soon.

Thanks Midnight, have just returned from ooh with antibiotics. The Doctor we saw asked us to complain as in her opinion it was a totally unworkable service and the old one was fine! I don't usually complain but this has really angered me due to the whole unnecessary waiting and lack of anyone prepared to take responsibility for this excuse for a service!

Hope your DH is also on the mend

YANBU. If it's any consolation (which it probably isn't), GPs hate the new system too. Luckily it's only the phone bit of the service - the face-to -face bit of out of hours is still run by local GPs in most areas - though this may change as services are put out to tender.

I am not looking forward to the time we need this service. It's a big old mess.

Hope all the poorly ones get seen and are on the end very soon

Mend not end......

What I don't understand is why we need 111 at all? Why are the govt spending huge amounts of money on this shit when the current ooh system works perfectly well?
Thankfully we are still on the old system, dds eye suddenly went from slightly sticky to oozing bright green goo at an alarming rate the other night, I rang the ooh service, the nurse rang me back 20 mins later saying could I come to the ooh clinic at the hospital for x time, we did, he gave abx drops and we were home half an hour later after picking them up from the pharmacy. Total time from initial phonecall to getting home with drops about 2.5 hours. On a quiet night I've seen the dr and been home again within an hour of ringing the first time.

Happened to friends of ours as well. All it will do is push more people straight to A&E, overloading their admissions and causing delays. It'[s an utter fuck up so far.

Twattybollocks, that's how it was! Much simpler.

Sparkle, that's what the Dr said was happening. I for one would think twice about using this service again.

I phoned the new 111 system on Saturday and was told to expect a phonecall back within 6 hours

We ended up googling and finding a NHS walk in centre which was an hour away but worth it with a perforated ear drum and raging infection.

The last place we wanted to go was A&E 30 mins away which should be the whole point of OOH but it obviously isnt working if we had of ended up in A&E. Whats the point in throwing money at yet another failing system.

Why we cant go back to the old way when you phoned your G.P surgery and the G.P on call phoned you back even if it was the middle of the night.

YANBU

I wonder where you all are?

111 worked perfectly for me last week. I called and gave me details, had a call back within 15 minutes, and they found a locum doctor who could see me in a really convenient place, rather than sending me to the nearest hospital.

I thought the system was quite good...I hope it'll all improve to match the service I had, rather than decaying further!

I'm still waiting for the call back from Saturday. It hasnt happened yet and we are now Wednesday

What's the difference between 111 and the old system? other than the number of course.

We still have the old ooh system here, which is a good job as last week I phoned NHS direct for advice on not quite 2 year old dd who had been vomitting all day, had not passed urine for over 6 hrs and could keep nothing down. I was told there was up to an 8 hr wait for a callback. I called the ooh service for advice, recieved a callback within 10 mins. Luckily at the same point dd had wet her nappy bt they gave lots of helpful advice. NHS direct phoned back after about 5 hours. Had we not had the ooh service I may well have ended up at a and e as I was very worried about dd being dehydrated.

Our County pulled back out of NHS 111 after two days and reverted to their own OOH system, due to problems with 111.
However, I am not sure that issues with clogging up A&E are entirely down to the poor performance of NHS 111, as yesterday our County Hospital adopted 'emergency procedures' in the daytime and cancelled all non urgent operations and OP appointments as A&E was under so much pressure. There was no major incident in the area, just people who needed urgent treatment. And that was when the Drs surgeries were actually open !!!!

Some of these are awful tales. Did anyone else complain? If so what was the response?

YANBU. I work for an OOH GP service and it was exactly as LunaticFringe described - 111 were taking the calls, sitting on them for 2-12 hours and then passing them to us for visits or appointments. Under the old system the call would have been taken in-house, triaged by a doctor and given an outcome within the hour (20 minutes for urgent cases).

Thankfully 111 fell flat on its arse here and we've got the contract back for a few more months.

You can complain through your own GP, or if you google the place where you live CCG you'll get contact details through there. Do complain... It's frightening.

Can I add (as an OOH dentist) that this system is also bollocks for us and our patients as well. Totally unjoined up. We have two dental nurses, one to triage and one to assist. In a four hour session, we can see 10 patients in pain and maybe 15 with swelling. What I wasn't prepared for was someone (I have no idea whether or how they were qualified) phoning half way through to say she had six patients that she had triaged for us and could she send them straight over... Erm nope, we are full. How we weren't told about this I have no idea, only the patients miss out on being seen and it's totally unacceptable.