To think £60 is alot of money for a GP's signature?

[EachandEveryone]

If id have known id have just taken it into my appointment with me but instead i went the official route. Ten days later the receptionist has called to say its ready and its £60. I wont be bothering to collect.

I was in hospital for five nights it was an emergency and i had to pay a cat sitter to come in. It was only looking at my policy that i realised i could claim it back. Every little helps. Form was straightforward i have my letter and everything. The gp has all my info. Sixty quid! Is this normal?

Im a nurse can i just get a doctor on my ward to sign it they know where ive been?

So if these payments are transferred to the business account why ask for a cheque payable to Dr Jane Bloggs and not the practice then. Please and thank you helps in all circumstances don't you think, or should I just man up over it in the same way I should man up over pirentialky lising £4 5k. Should I perhaps also man up over the £5k I've recently spent on a cobsultant psychiatrist for my teenager because the wanking NHS doesn't provide MH care for teenagers and my even wankier gp's answer was to find a counsellor off the internet but at the next consultation ticked me off for looking up treatment for osteoporosis on the internet. It can't work both ways.

The NHS broke when Bevan fed your mouths with gold. It is truly broken now. None of you do my family any favours; we pay handsomely for poor service standards. Nothing about it is free and those bits that still are at the point of delivery in too many oarts of the country "require improvement".

You clearly have huge issues with what you expect from the NHS given the meagre funding it receives. Taxation doesn’t provide enough by a long shot.

Ohtheroses your comments are bizarre and you appear to be trying to generalise a particular (maybe poor) experience to a much broader concept.

Your general comments about the NHS make no sense - the gold quote was at the inception of the NHS so it’s nonsensical to say that this broke the NHS because it didn’t exist at this point.

Finally you don’t pay handsomely to use your GP - your GP gets around £120 per year for each of you that is registered regardless of how many times you are seen (average is currently between 5 and 6 times per year). Try spending that privately and see what you get.

You keep going on about please and thank yous but you seem to be the one with the attitude problem.

And yet these accountants and experts at GP finances (Sun and DM newspaper readers!) will be on here tomorrow expecting free medical advice online- bypass and ignore those threads!

I just expect efficiency, fairbess and good manners. If your receptionist tells me a form will be ready on Wednesday afternoon and it isn't and I've written a cheque for Dr Bingowings for £50, when I arrive and it isn't there when I have an injured child in a wheelchair, do you honestly think it's too much to expect a stamp to be put on it when I have been inconvenienced?

Do you honestly think it's acceptable on the one hand to tell a patient to find MH care off the internet for an under 18 and next time to tell the patient off for looking up osteoporosis treatments on the internet?

At present private providers still need a GP referral. I'd rather they didn't. Nevertheless my family pay a six figure sum in tax every year. We hardly use the NHS except for the odd referral we pay AND save the NHS thousands. When dd needed care there was zero support; I even had to soyrce a psychiatrist myself for a referral to be made. That was not acceptable.

Our localCAMHS has had an extra £2.3 million, most of it spent on sn extra layer of bureacracy called Beacon. DD had a CAMHS assessment. No staff were at work before 9.30 in a 9-5 service and her case was closed when she was actively self harming. I didn't know for over a month because they lost our contact details.

Resources my left foot. If i have to end up paying more I expect far far higher service standards.

OhTheRoses.
Suck it up... there is always private healthcare!

Thank God. And that's largely what I have. But why should anyvindividual suck up poor standards that are largely not fit fir purpose?

Why should any parent suck up the lack of CAMHS when their DC need help. We could pay; thousands can't. GP's don't particularly seem to care

I work for a medical practice in OZ. I guess our Medicare is similar to NHS.

I'm absolutely fed up with people casually dropping in blank forms. (Cannot even be bothered putting their names on them).

They are quite surprised when I tell them there is a fee and no we can't claim it from Medicare.

Actually, I only this morning put up a new scale of fees in the waiting room. Have also added that forms take up to 2 weeks to complete.

I’m not a gp but my time chargenis £25 per 15 minutes plus vat. £60 would be 30 minutes plus vat. If not paid it would be sent to debt collection.

Indeed fluff, but it seems private work for a GP should be done out of the goodness of our hearts, at a loss, or even better for free!

The GP is under no obligation to actually sign the form at all - if you’re not happy to pay their fee, then ask the hospital staff instead. Most practices who charge her gp fees for this type of stuff do it as a deterrent rather than a money-making scheme. In my Practice we no longer sign any of these things, including letters for school, fitness to do sky-dives, letters for Disneyland etc etc. It takes up too much time that could be spent seeing patients, and frankly isn’t worth the aggro from people who mosh a lot having to pay for this private work.

*moan, not mosh

Why should any parent suck up the lack of CAMHS when their DC need help. We could pay; thousands can't. GP's don't particularly seem to care

They care in the main, but what do you want them to do about it?

Find your son a crisis team that will work in the evenings and weekend for free, outside of their day job?

Train up and become a psychiatrist just for you?

Magic up a service that doens't exist??

Its not the GPs fault there isn't anyone to bloody refer your son to.

School wanted a letter from gp to say DS has a life threatening peanut allergy and the cost was £60.

birdonawire1 - the school shouldn’t be asking for this. Why not take your word for it? It’s hardly the sort of thing you’d make up for no reason!

Tax avoidance doesn't have to be illegal to be immoral.

rather depends on the morals ....

The point is I should’ve been told shouldn’t I? There’s no notices and the receptionist had a good read through my forms which I had filled in but no mention of money. I would never have agreed to it.

Then that’s a valid point, your OP wasn’t clear about that.

Ask to speak to the PM, state that you weren’t told the price and that you wouldn’t have proceeded if you had known. Perhaps offer £30 to collect the paperwork and be done with it, and suggest that they should either clarify their charging fire in future or ask for payment upfront.

I agree with Lemony; surely it's up to them to make charges clear before you request anything?

Speak to the practice manager and explain you weren't told about the cost.

Our gp has a list of charges up in reception - I'm glad doctors charge otherwise everyone would be asking for letters everything ...

The NHS is not a registered charity. For what you are getting, it’s peanuts

The NHS is not a registered charity. For what you are getting, it’s peanuts

I agree, but it’s only fair that we as practices are up front about costs before they are incurred. I wouldn’t enter into a totally open arrangement with a solicitor or mechanic and this shouldn’t be any different.

We used to do it this way many years ago and ran into this kind of issue. We now quote and charge up front, everyone knows what is happening.

Are you kidding me? A two second initial everything filled out for them £60 is peanuts??? Wow

But they cannot just initial it. By signing, they are putting their professional reputation on the line. They can't just sign it - you could be trying to commit fraud for all you know. They'd have to, at the minimum, pull up the records to check that the dates, and severity of illness, and details were right.

Any doctor who just blindly signs stuff would not get to stay a doctor for long. Why should they put their career, income, home, family, and mental health at risk to blindly dash of signatures on just anything?