gp doesn't do blood test?

[mousmous]

so have to treck to major hospital at bloody inconvenient time to have it done.
aibu to think such a basic service should be done there and then?

I've never known one to.

They don't really have enough time to.

Luckily here we don't have to go anywhere near a hospital, there's a few places we can walk into and get it done or make an appointment in other places.

Our village surgery made the phlebotomist redundant and now we have to travel to local town (bus service chronic and can take up more than a whole morning to get there, wait ages in queue for blood to be taken then wait for bus home) so instead you drive, pay to park in the hospital car park, still queue up to 1-1/2 hours for blood to be taken (esp i f you 've got to have a fasting blood test, i.e. early morning, like many people going for the test) instead of appointment and 10 mins at village surgery.

Oh yes, and the surgery gets a referral fee from the hospital for every patient sent there for a blood test.

But it costs us petrol, or bus fare, parking charges and TIME.

Even at 'quiet' times, the queue is normally 45 mins plus.

Breathe.

I've never heard of this before. Our gp surgery has several nurses plus a phlebotomist and midwife if it's pregnancy related who all do blood tests.

thing is, I feel like shit ill now. possibly by the tome I finally have the blood test it will not show what it is supposed to show anymore?

So many differences. Would be interesting to know the areas everyone is in. I remember when the I first heard about training up health care assistants/receptionists to take bloods, I was quite shocked. It actually works very well.
My nhs area is Tayside, Scotland

earliest 'non urgent' app 1st april.
am going private...

mousmous it's crazy that you can't get a non-urgent appt for that long and sad that you've had to go private. When I was sent to the hospital to get mine done it was to check my iron levels. I felt so weak and had palpitations and just thought how wrong it was that for whatever reason, the practice had outsourced phlebotomy services. Hope you are OK.

Our docs just take blood in consult. It's great, no need to make a second appt. Nhs Highland.

earliest 'non urgent' app 1st april

That's London for you . . . I used to live in London, and couldn't get a GP appointment for love nor money. A 2-3 week wait was standard, and an 'emergency' apt meant battling the phone lines from 8-8:10am (when they were all gone) - it was worse than getting tickets for Glastonbury.

I used to use the walk-in clinic. You can't hang about for 2 weeks when you've got cystitis and a kidney infection.

My gp sometimes gives me a form to take to hospital and sometimes just does it themselves there and then depending on how urgent it is and whether they have time.. also if they are a junior Dr they quite like the practice it seems!

OP, where in London are you?
The mediclinic places in train stations will do blood tests, as will the TDL in the west end.
Prices vary depending on what it is you are testing, but I pay £25 a time for my TSH for my thyroid