How long to wait for GP appointment. Angry, probably ABU

[Gertrudetrudy]

Hi,

Could I ask how long you wait to see your GP?

I am only in the UK 2 years so am fairly new to the NHS stuff. I have never had need to visit a GP or deal with the NHS until now (thankfully!)

I rang the GP today to try get an appointment and first the receptionist wouldn't let me pre-book, after some negotiation she managed to find me a pre-bookable appointment for 13th July! That's two weeks away!

I am astounded as this and quite angry tbh. It seems to me that people who work are at a massive disadvantage when trying to get an appointment (i.e. can't ring the morning of and hang around all day so have to use pre-bookable) even though it's our taxes that are funding this.

Is this a normal wait time? I'm from Ireland and it's about €65 to see a GP over there but there is never a problem with wait times or appointments.

AIBU to be this dissatisfied with the healthcare system?

[quesadillas]

At my current surgery they offer urgent appointments, non-urgent same day appointments, and advance appointments. I mostly book online, which is brilliant. Sometimes it's tricky to get an online appointment at short notice, but if I ring, there's usually something.

My pre iOS surgery you had to ring at 8am (rarely getting through) for a morning appointment and 1pm for an afternoon one. It was terrible. Neither of those times were compatible with my job, and at the time, most of the appointments I needed were routine ones - repeat prescriptions, ongoing minor issues - so not being able to book in advance was a real pain. I had a massive row with the surgery manager once about it. Thankfully I moved house soon afterwards.

I partially agree with the annoying lunchtime closures. It's not so much the GPs not having an hour to do all the non-contact work, but I wish I could e.g collect prescriptions from reception at that time, or be able to speak to them about clinics etc. I don't understand why all reception and admin staff have to have the same lunch hour.

[Baddz]

For pre bookable it's a 4/6 week wait.
Small town only one surgery.
You can phone on the day (from 815am) but obv if you don't get through you dont get an appt.
6/8 week wait for blood tests. We have to go to the local hospital that do a walk in blood clinic (20 miles away)
You can get home visits but you have to be on your last legs!
They just moved the ooh surgery even further away...so that's 20 miles away now too.
Not great, really.

[BatteryPoweredHen]

You don't close? That's a good thing!

I have to ask though, why are you answering my post that is specifically about why so many do?

[ISingSoprano]

Just trying to highlight that GP practices are in effect small businesses. Each one will be different. It is a contractual requirement on GP practices to have some form of patient participation group too. If you don't like the fact that your surgery closes at lunch time then tell them - get involved.

[kali110]

That sounds good, iv waited 3 weeks before. I tried to get an app today as iv been feeling awful for last week but no appointments, they are always fully booked.

[FluffyJawsOfDoom]

3-4 weeks here, or phone on the day.

[Discopanda]

A week unless you're over 70, even for babies.

[electionfatigue]

Lunch, what's that? We don't close our doors at lunchtime and the phones are answered. Lunch is generally a sandwich at my desk or in a meeting.

[StarlingMurmuration]

At our GPs, you call up by midday and ask the receptionists if you can see a doctor, and then the doctor calls you back to find out what's wrong, and then slots you in at some point that day. You don't get to choose when though. I'm on maternity leave at the moment, so it's perfect, I've never been unable to get an appointment for my son or myself. However, you can't prebook, so I'm thinking of switching to another local surgery when I go back to work, for me at least - at the other one you can prebook but have to wait up to a fortnight.

[shouldnthavesaid]

Lunch?! Does anyone in the nhs get that? I'm at the lowest level and I get 30 minutes, depending on how busy we are I can go from 9-2pm with nothing.

[shouldnthavesaid]

Mus say I've been seeing my GP regularly - 4 weekly - for eight years and never had an issue getting an appointment once. Think I'm lucky with my surgery though, they are wonderful.

[DJThreeDog]

My surgery is brilliant.

I made an appointment for a smear test today - the appointment is tomorrow. I have also made an appointment for next Wednesday, they could offer me earlier but the doctor I wanted to see is part time and I'm away on business Monday and Tuesday.

I've called up before for my son when nursery said they thought height have mumps. They told us to come straight up and they'd fit him in - they've done that two or three times for my kid's appointments.

The one thing I would change is the booking system. You can only call up or drop in, and they only have one line with no call waiting. I got an appointment fairly quickly but I had to ring 15+ times before I got through!

AND - there's a walk in next door. I turned up for a drop in appointment once but they were full. I was offered an appointment for 11am but it wasn't really convenient. I was seen in about 15 minutes at the walk in though which was great.

[DancingHat]

Our village surgery is only open half days and when I phoned up for my DD on Monday I got offered ones on Tues and Weds before I realised she'd be at activities and so booked her in for Thursday. So I could have had a next day appointment if we'd been free. We are very lucky but then you have to be available for during the day appointments rather than first thing.

[ValancyJane]

I'm very lucky judging by some of the comments on here, can always get a same day urgent appointment if I ring first thing in the morning. If not, pre-book able appointments are normally about 3-4 days max. They have an online system so you can see what's available and book it yourself.

I do however live in a small northern town, when I lived in London there was more of a wait!

[Pishedorf]

One of the many reasons why appointments are hard to come by happened to me tonight.

I had a mini evening surgery for patients who work tonight. 4 appointments...every single patient did not turn up. What a waste of NHS resources!

Sincerely - Exhausted GP who doesn't earn as much as the Daily Mail likes to make out she does and hasn't had a 'lunch break' in years.

Ps. The covering lunch time argument. Yes I see PPs side of the argument but in the example given above - if there are 3 GPs covering a day.....say all 3 do two 2.5- 3 hour surgeries a day at 10 minutes each patient would see more patients than if 2 do the usual 2 surgeries a day and 1 did a lunchtime surgery and perhaps 1 or 2 mini surgeries tacked on at the start or end of the day. So it is more cost effective and opens more appointments for patients in a small practice like that. Plus if they close every single lunchtime that suggests to me they have a large amount of home visits to do, therefore they are divided between all the GPs. Home visits can take a really long time, and they have to be fitted in the day somewhere. If someone is ill enough to require a home visit (ie. in my practice we do them for elderly, housebound and palliative patients only) they can't be put off until the end of the day for patient safety reasons.

I agree it is an absolute PITA for people who work. But there have been many pilots over the years with re: weekend opening and extended hours and they haven't been used enough to prove cost effective. GPs have only 8% of the national NHS budget, yet do 90% of daily NHS contact. There is a huge recruitment crisis so we have to work spread very thinly. Our work isn't just seeing patients face to face and unfortunately given how much we have to do in a day (as one of colleagues listed above) something has got to give and that is quick routine appointments for non urgent medical matters for those who work. Trust me, GPs don't want to be working this way at all. We want a system that works for our patients safely. It just isn't possible at present given the funding and recruitment crisis.

[DeeWe]

If I say it's non urgent then they are very apologetic about offering the afternoon not the morning.
On occasion I've said very urgent and they'll ser me within the hour, often in 15 minutes. Ours is particularly good though.

[Oldsu]

My surgery is brilliant last week my 66 diabetic OH had his feet checked out, the chap who did it was a bit concerned about dark patches of skin on OH feet and said he would make a note, this morning the GP surgery rang and offered OH an appt tomorrow (OH is working so cant go) so made an appt for 9m Friday morning.

Brilliant service, also OHs optician refused to refer him for a cataract op as they said both eyes had to go, even though he is diabetic and a cataract would make the Retinal scan he has to have done every year difficult, GP referred him immediately he had the op two weeks ago

[shadowfax07]

I had to wait for a fortnight for a GP appointment after I found a lump in my breast, yes, I did tell the receptionist why I wanted an appointment. I then had to wait a further 12 weeks for an appointment at the Breast Clinic.

It turned out to be breast cancer, thankfully my lymph nodes were clear so it hasn't spread.

[FastWindow]

I might just take my gp office some chocolates next time I go, as they have never failed to give me or my dc a same day appt. Especially the dc. For them it's 'turn up now , we'll fit you in.'
Feeling really lucky now.

[RhiWrites]

My surgery takes bookings and I can usually get in within 7 days (Oxford, UK) but my GP runs at least an hour late .(frequently longer) on appointment times. This is because she is awesome and tries to fix people.

[Ruperta]

We don't 'close' for lunch, reception is still open & there is always a duty doctor on for emergencies - but of course you have to have a time when everyone is not seeing patients so we can have the meetings I discussed in my previous post I.e child protection meeting with health visitors and social workers, palitative care meeting, practice meetings etc etc. I think whoever it was who said 'classic public sector response' you have such a closed view of what a GP does, I would love you to sit in with me & show you what public sector is about!

[softhedgehog]

woolythoughts if you can't accept a smear appointment booked in advance it is tricky to get it done. any private hospital will do it for you if you prefer that route, just ring them up and you'll get a quote. couple of hundred pounds I'd have thought.

[PoundingTheStreets]

The crux of the problem is that there aren't enough GPs to go round. I welcomed CAMERON's pledge to increase opening hours for GPs so that more can benefit, but I recognise that this will only work with a huge injection of resources (staff and funding).

I don't work in the NHS but I am a public sector employee. The trouble with many frontline services is that a significant part of the workload takes place out of public view. It makes us appear inaccessible, when the truth is we're working our socks off - often to comply with legislative and safeguarding demands - but as we're invisible and unavailable when we're doing it, people assume we're lazy.

[Gertrudetrudy]

So after some reflection it seems I am being unreasonable to an extent. I would happily pay an extra few quid each month to have better services but I know that's an unpopular view. It worries me that people aren't getting seen for something that could be nipped in the bud early, rather than them becoming seriously ill and costing alot more down the line.

For example shadowfax07 your story is horrible. Are you ok? That is something that really should have been recognised and handled asap - never mind the worry that something like that could cause.

The whole system is in need of a major overhaul really.

[PurpleHairAndPearls]

BatteryPoweredHen, you sound a little obtuse yourself with your posts about GPs basically living the life of Riley because they are public sector workers

My current GP (and in fact the whole surgery) is wonderful. I have a serious chronic health condition so, although I'm under the care of consultants, see my GP regularly for pain relief and meds. I rang a while ago just to ask for some increased pain meds and the GP did a telephone consultation and left a prescription at the desk for DH to collect. Later on, she turned up my doorstep, on her way home, saying that as she never normally hears me complain, she was worried I was really bad and wanted to check on me.

A huge amount of people, not just GPs, in the health service really work very hard indeed and are considerably under appreciated, not just by the government but by the general public. The irony is that the people moaning possibly don't realise this is pretty much the "golden age", as I think that under the current governments ideological cuts, the national health service is only going to go downhill, if it even continues to exist as it is.

I really think some people don't know how lucky we are in the UK.