To be fucked off with the doctors situation

[StopFancyingPeople]

I’m so sick of the fight to get a doctors appointment. It never used to be so difficult and now it’s near on impossible.

I rang at 8am on Monday like you’re meant to. Automated message .... press 1 for appointments ... I press 1. I then get a long automated lecture about Coronovirus and then get told to press 1 again if I still want an appointment and have no symptoms of CV. I press 1. Automated message telling me the lines are very busy and press 1 for a call back. I press 1 and head off to work. They ring back at 9:30 when I’m upto my eyes in it at work and can’t answer the phone.

I try again Tuesday. Same kerfuffle with the automated messages. I request a call back and head off to work. Get a call back at 11am by which point there are no appointments left.

I try again yesterday. Same old shit. No appointments left by the time they ring me back. I lost my shit a little as I feel so Ill. I need to see a fucking doctor. It shouldn’t be this difficult!!! They sympathise and offer me an appointment ... for the end of March!!!!

I’m barely functioning. I’m incredibly fatigued, constant headache, nausea, anxious mess and not sleeping. Yesterday I could barely stay awake whilst driving home. Last night I went to bed do fucking tired that I woke up in a pool of my own piss. I didn’t even wake up for a wee. 2nd night in a row that I’ve wet the bed.

AIBU to call dr again today, make up some shit just to get an emergency same day appointment?! I don’t even feel that I should need to make shit up, I think I genuinely need to see a Dr today.

The annoying thing is, when you do by some miracle of god get to see a GP they then decide you need a blood test. Now god forbid the GP do this test there and then ... noooo .... you’ll have to make another appointment for a nurse to do it and good luck getting that within the next month or so.

It’s ridiculous. The system is fucking failing.

Also, as a nurse I see this from other people’s points of view too. A woman made up an excuse to come to my clinic last week. When she got there she asked me to diagnose something she had as she’d been trying to get a dr appointment for 3 weeks and has all the ducking symptoms of cancer. I could not help her, she needed to see a GP 3 weeks ago.

user "put on more staff"? There are no more staff! IME most existing staff don't want overtime and GP and practice nurse positions are extremely difficult to fill. 4/6 nurses at my practice won't be there in five years, they'll have retired.

Sort of. We are paid per patient - about £100 per year for everything apart from rent/mortgage. The average patient sees a GP or nurse 7.5 times per year. So the practice gets the princely sum of £13 gross per consultation.

A bit disingenuous to take a couple of random statistics. Lots of patients won't go near their GP surgery for years, and those who have 7.5 or more appointments will likely have conditions for which the GP surgery get more financial support, such as diabetes and depression, or for which they get paid, i.e. flu jabs. The capitation which you say is £100 per patient per year is only one of their income sources.

I guess MrsNoah2020 it's because GP's are perceived as self employed whereas hospital Drs are perceived as employed by the NHS.

I thought the payment was more like £135 with additional payments madenfor hitting quotas for things like smear tests, immunisation, etc., notwithstanding the additional charges, at our surgery paid directly to the GP, for things like referral letters and insurance forms.

Personally, I would be very happy to have a system like that in France or Australia whereby the most vulnerable receive services free at the point of delivery and everyone else has a form of social insurance.

notwithstanding the additional charges, at our surgery paid directly to the GP, for things like referral letters and insurance forms.

And private medical exams, and death certificates, also rental income from those who rent out part of their premises for the "in house" pharmacy (and some GP practices who operate their own pharmacies go make profits out of the prescriptions they issue). Selling advertising on appointment cards. Lots and lots of other earning opportunities to increase the partners' profits.

I can wait weeks for a routine appointment at my GPs.

However, I think the vast majority of GPs and their surgery staff do an amazing job, dealing with an ageing, increasingly entitled public.

If the funding model is the way it is, don't blame the GPs, and don't vote Tory.... 😊

@user1497207191 if we were paid for the work we do it would bankrupt the NHS within about a week.

The average patients sees their GP 7 times a year. That takes into account all those who never comes, and those who are in every week. I'm looking at an outpatients letter now which says that an appointment costs the NHS £167. Even if you say that a GP appt is cheaper - let's call it £100 - that would mean we would get £700 per patient to run our service. We currently get on average £120. If we were paid by activity we would have the money to run the better service that we would like to do, and we could make the job of being a GP a less sure route to burnout and retain more doctors. But who is going to pay to multiply GP funding by 5 overnight?

@OhTheRoses full payment including stuff like QOF varies from about £80-120 per patient depending on the surgery.

If the average patient sees their Dr 7 times a year a lot must be seeing them far more than that. DH - 4 tumes in 28 years; me probably twice a year (chronic condition); DS about once every two years; DD 4/5 times a year - MH problems and has to be reviewed. NHS provided fuck all support. Private support was £6,000. Our joint tax bill laat year was £200,000. Waterbottle12 don't even begin to imply the NHS has provided my family with vfm. Oh yes, DH saw a private dermatologist today - he has a BCC on his upper cheek. 6 weeks ago his NHS GP told him it was dry skin. It's being dealt with on 10th March. Not what I'd call VFM.

A bit disingenuous to take a couple of random statistics. Lots of patients won't go near their GP surgery for years Er, yes, that is the nature of an average - some data points will be above and beyond it.

and those who have 7.5 or more appointments will likely have conditions for which the GP surgery get more financial support Not true at all - most high users have MH problems, for which there is no additional support

.The capitation which you say is £100 per patient per year is only one of their income source It's by far the largest one and it covers - or is supposed to cover - all general primary care. GPs can earn money for providing additional services, but that involves additional work..

Also, the £100 capitation fees covers all the other services that a surgery provides to patients each year, including prescribing, referral letters etc. So, actually, £13 per consultation is an over-estimate - £10 is probably more accurate.

@MrsNoah2020 I have no sympathy vis a vis prescribing. I developed thyroid disease 30 years ago and have needed 100mcg thyroxine since. I have one blood test per year. 30 years ago I got one prescription for 365 pills that are as cheap as chips. Now I have to faff with six prescriptions a year. Not my choice and I certainly don't have time.to waste but it appears my GP surgery does.

Please do not accuse patients of wadting time when GPs are strangling themselves with unnecessary bureacracy.

A perfect example of GPs being blamed for NHS policy. Do you seriously think your GP wants to do 6 times as much work by issuing 6 prescriptions? We have been banned from prescribing more than 2 months of meds at a time, supposedly to prevent waste

@MrsNoah2020 Well as we, thevpubluc, never cease hearing about how overworked GPs are, perhaps thd GPs may wish to complain on behalf of their patients on this one.

It's sad to see how much my GP surgery is struggling. A couple of years back I got an apology when booking a routine appointment and having to wait three days now it is really hard to be seen at all. A part time GP left and then the surgery in the next village closed meaning a lot more patients to be seen.

They recently took on 2 nurse practitioners which has helped a lot, you can normally be seen by one of them within a day but it is still 3 weeks for a routine GP appointment.

I know practices in the nearest town are at breaking point, partly due to loads of new houses and no new facilities.

I'm in Scotland btw, some on here have implied it is just an English problem but it is not.

Hope you're on the mend OP. You are not at all unreasonable to be pissed off with the situation. It's luck of the draw whether you get decent services or not.

My surgery was great - seen within 2 weeks at most for non urgent appointments, same day appointment for children under 2 no matter the issue, appointment within 24 hours for any other urgent issues. There's only 2 doctors and 1 nurse at my practice and they're all lovely. It's all gone to shit though (through no fault of their own of course). I'm waiting almost 6 weeks for a non urgent appointment. The receptionist told me it would be better to take 18 month old DS to A&E instead of trying to get an urgent appointment as they had no space to offer me one for at least a week.
Out of hours services have been suspended in my area due to GP shortages, there are only 2 hospitals operating OOH and they are absolutely miles away. I'd be looking at £40+ in taxis. GP surgeries are experiencing a much higher influx of patients now as a result of us not being able to get OOH appointments. A&E is the same. Our 'super hospital' provides the main A&E and it is constantly rammed, but people can't afford to travel to OOH or people can't wait for a standard GP appointment so what are they supposed to do?
We need more GP's, they are invaluable to our health care system. But why would anyone want to be a GP for crazy working hours with not enough pay and being constantly abused by patients? Something's gotta give.

None of the GP's at my practice work full time. Average GP salary is quoted on website as £81,000. In addition all the partners do private clinics a couple of times a week at one of the two local private hositals.

DH is a GP - physical and mentally it’s too hard to do full time. DH works four days a week - last week he was at the surgery 45 hours and has done paperwork over the weekend.

Our GP was like this but thankfully the two surgeries merged and now one side is full of nurses who do on the day appointments sit and wait service.
Still hard to get a GP appointment though but made easier by using the patient access app as you can see what's available etc.
My female GP who I like to see its like gold dust trying to be seen by her. Her appointments go within minutes.

@Parker231 I have a professional, director level job. It is hard and stressful. I work full-time, admittedly rarely morethan 50/55 hpw but that is regular and my contract says as required.

DH is a lawyer - top of his profession - he worked from midday yesterday and is in today - still often works 60 hour weeks - greatly down from the peak of his career.

In common with GP's we are highly trained and have professional qualifications that support our six figure salaries.

Most professionals work hard, deal with difficult people and navigate complex operational and strategic matters on a daily basis. It goes with the territory. A full time GP earns 6 figures - why shoukd their professional lives be a breeze compared to the professional lives of others. Also if DH or I screw up at work we risk dismissal for far more minor aberrations than Drs ever seem to face.

On theRoses - I am director level in the corporate world for a global consultancy company - it’s long hours and stressful but it doesn’t involve life and death decisions affecting lives on a daily basis. If DH messes up someone could die. Basically there are not enough doctors, nurses or GP’s to go around.

The problem is the underfunding of the NHS and not being able to recruit enough GPs.

Simple as that

DH's role nowadays has very wide reach and can have a huge impact on the lives of those concerned.

DD's GP messed up and she coukd have died - still waiting for the apology. Couldn't be bothered to read notes.

"I rang my new doctors to ask about registration, without a lie I had to listen to a 10 fucking minute spiel about their new online service. I absolutely lost my shit and was pretty rude to the receptionist when I got through, I wasn't proud of myself but I have half an hour for lunch in an extremely high pressure NHS job and I don't need my entire lunch break being taken up with one phone call.
It's disgusting."

And people wonder why GP receptionists are not very smiley . Jesus was there really any need? That's a real person at the end of the phone. I've been in tears when I've dealt with people like you. Thank god for my supportive colleagues and a brilliant practice manager and supportive GPs where I work who are all well aware when we get patient abuse.

@OhTheRoses

Lots of our elderly patients and those with chronic conditions see us weekly. So 50+ visits per year which accounts for 6 people who never come.

That's pretty much what I said at 20.51 yesterday @waterbottle12. You elderly patients are getting vfm. The problem for patients such as us is that we still have to use the GP for referrals vis a vis insurance and the time that has to go into making an apt., collecting the letter because although the GP charges £35 for it, when I am actually saving the NHS money, the practice will not put a stamp on it and pist it because it contravenes their policy. I leave for work before the surgety opens and get home after it shuts. It's ridiculous. Oh and they can't scan or email either.

Zero NHS services, no tax relief on insurance premiums. It is not value for money. How much does your CCG spend on reviews and bureacracy?

Basically there are not enough doctors, nurses or GP’s to go around.

Which is down to decades of inadequate numbers of training placements at unis etc. There was a time when the medical unions refused to increase the number of training places. It's not all about money. As a couple of posters above have mentioned, they just can't get staff despite offering attractive salaries. Even if the budgets doubled, just where would the staff come from? Or being cynical would they start being willing to work more sessions if they got paid even more??