‘Call at 8am for a GP appointment’

[purplepufferfish]

I work for the NHS and personally understand the stress that the service is under. I get it. But does this frustrate anyone else?

Call for a GP appointment. Get told that the nearest one is two weeks away and to call back the next day at 8am for a same day appointment.

Call back at 8am the next day, as is everyone else of course.

Finally get through at 10am to be told that the next appointment is two weeks away and to call back at 8am for a same day appointment!

Again I know that this is no one’s fault and I genuinely blame no one for this.

Am I being unreasonable for being frustrated?

"As a pp said, they can't just assume everyone is going to be able to make the appointment time and day they send out, and they can't just assume most people don't work!"

No, but employers in the UK know how the hospitals work and should give time off for a hospital appointment, whether convenient or not.

I don’t call anymore, I fill in the online e consult form and request a call back, a GP usually calls you within 48 hours. It’s almost impossible to get an appointment at the surgery now and phoning is usually a waste of time. At my gp you have to talk to a gp on the phone before they even consider giving you a actual appointment.

@NK346f2849X127d8bca260

Our surgery has introduced E Consult, apart from blood tests you can book nothing online or over phone. It takes me about 8 minutes to fill in and they phone/text back within 48 hours unless urgent. If they decide to phone and you miss call you have to go through the whole procedure of filling out E Consult again. It is a nightmare as even for medication reviews you have to do it that way.

Our surgery have started using eConsult too. I had to answer 52 questions for a repeat prescription of the pill because I made the mistake of telling it about my PCOS. Still less painful than ringing up though.

@Gwenhwyfar there's actually no legal obligation for employers giving time off for hospital appointments or attendance.

Econsult is a faff but at least it potentially gets every patient’s problem under the nose of the GP so they can prioritise, which the 8am fastest fingers first system definitely doesn’t.

@Lovemusic33

I don’t call anymore, I fill in the online e consult form and request a call back, a GP usually calls you within 48 hours. It’s almost impossible to get an appointment at the surgery now and phoning is usually a waste of time. At my gp you have to talk to a gp on the phone before they even consider giving you a actual appointment.

I REALLY hope our surgery introduces this, it sounds a million times better than what we have currently

I've always thought that GPs have waiting time targets and do this to fudge the figures so that officially everyone who wants an appointment gets one the same day. It's not on.

You say no online booking but I thought every surgery had an online option via patient access or similar apps OP, have you downloaded one and checked? Ours enables us to send messages to the GP, and my doctor sent me a text shortly afterwards answering my questions (presumably if you could get a message through saying you REALLY need to be seen, they might book you in). Very frustrating if this isn't available to you.

Sometimes it seems counterproductive as the thing most likely to make you better is rest, ie sleeping past 8 am!

But if it’s bad enough for the doctors I suppose rest isn’t going to cure it.

What kind of amateurish surgery are you at that they don't even have a phone queue?

If I was you I'd change to a practice that realizes it's 2021. I know it's hard when a GP knows your history of long term health issues but seriously, you're not getting to see one now so what's the point?

Primary care is rubbish

And yet, time after time, it comes up as astonishing value for money overall - and that's despite the horrendous scale of the underfunding.

@LindaEllen

My surgery is really good, but DP's does the 8am thing and it's infuriating.

He usually needs to see them about back pain, which is ongoing, and he struggles to get to sleep at night due to the pain. So by the time he drops off it could be early hours of the morning - then he has to wake up to phone the GP. I would happily do it, but they always want to speak to him.

Get him to write a letter giving them permission to speak to you. Send one copy to the gp and keep one for yourself.

While some of you slag off the NHS, can you remember a post last week from someone in Portugal, who's child needed treatment for an infection? This cost 200 euros, so they were left with very little for food that week. What a wonderful service Europe has!

But go for it - slag off the NHS - never mind the fact that all NHS staff have worked harder this past year than most of you can imagine. While some of you have been furloughed, learning languages and wondering which Netflix series to watch next, NHS staff have been nearly killing themselves keeping it all going.

I'm hiding this thread now so don't bother having a go at me.

You can both criticise a service, yet be pleased it exists. Both are not seperate.

@gurglebelly

Check with them that they haven’t already done so. Most surgeries do something like this now. Unfortunately most of us don’t check the surgery website or Facebook page before ringing, so don’t know when things change. I only normally go to my own surgery every few years (smear) and unless I knew this was a ‘thing’ it wouldn’t occur to me to check if they did it. It’s the same with all the changes tbh, nobody knows (why would they) and then the poor receptionists get an earful when a patient rings up expecting the system to be the same as when they rang a year ago and it isn’t. Not either of their fault.

The longer I live away from the UK, the stranger I find it that people are expected to be grateful for a service that is being paid for from their taxes, or consider themselves lucky to have a 'free' (taxpayer-funded) service that treats them as if they have nothing better to do than waste time trying to access care.

This. We pay for the NHS through our taxes, it's not free, and I don't understand people (clinicians and patients alike) who act as though it is. I know how much pressure it's under, and I'm a massive supporter of the system - a lot of people who slate the NHS don't realise what it would be like to not have it - but that doesn't mean it's not accountable.

Re the appointment booking silliness (and I'm talking pre-Covid here, as obviously that's thrown everything up in the air), I'm convinced it's because the NHS likes to make itself look good by having impressive numbers of people 'able to' be seen on the same day, but this ignores the fact that some problems aren't that pressing and it's not always possible for a patient to attend an appointment the same day (due to logistics like getting time off work at short notice, for example). Chronic conditions, for example, often don't require a same-day appointment.

The current system is a trial for me as I have ME and find afternoon appointments much easier, but those seem not to exist any more if the receptionists are to be believed. (I'm not sure of the exact details of how the booking system works, so willing to stand corrected on this, but all I know is that every time I ask for an afternoon appointment I'm told there aren't any, and often informed patronisingly that 'most patients prefer mornings'.)

Sometimes I get 'can you come now?' which again is great for pressing problems, but not usually necessary for me, so I find myself feeling I'd rather that immediate appointment went to someone who really needed it.

If I seem to have a bee in my bonnet about this it's because I've had a few negative experiences trying to get appointments in the afternoon or on a different day. I was once told by a receptionist 'Well, you're not ill, are you dear, if you don't want to see the doctor as soon as possible?' which I felt betrayed a breathtaking ignorance about the nature of chronic conditions.

[quote DinoRhino]@Gwenhwyfar there's actually no legal obligation for employers giving time off for hospital appointments or attendance.[/quote]
No, I know, but most decent employers would, not least because they know that hospital appointments are not usually agreed for a mutually convenient time.

I think an opt out would be fairer for many of us. I don't get sick really and when my student son has needed anything in the last 4 years 100% of it I have had to pay for as the NHS has no provision.Eg last week I had to pay his rail fare, his Harley st cost and then about £60 prescription charge and yet I pay hundreds of thousands into the NHS and work about 7 days a week all year.

Perhaps we could have priority service for the NHS based on how much tax you pay or how little you have used the service.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions

Primary care is rubbish

And yet, time after time, it comes up as astonishing value for money overall - and that's despite the horrendous scale of the underfunding.

How is value for money calculated though? It doesn't count all the time people lose phoning over and over trying to get through, even having to find time to go to the surgery in person because they can't get through on the phone. Or the people who give and don't go at all until their problem is serious. Or the people who don't get to see a specialist until it's too late because the GP was doing their gatekeeping job? I've met people who live in areas where it's easy to get a GP appointment. The system works for them, but not for others.

it's the automated message that does my head in. We get it, COVID! I can recite it word for word by the time I've actually spoken to a receptionist.

"Perhaps we could have priority service for the NHS based on how much tax you pay or how little you have used the service."

Hardly fair. We need to fund it properly and the government needs to manage it properly.

No, of course you're not unreasonable...unless you're one of the people who voted for Boris in 2019 and Theresa in 2017, then perhaps, the chickens are coming home to roost.

I have been so lucky with my GP surgery, I have just sent them an email to thank them.
They arrange GP call backs and keep in touch by text message, respond to emails.
I have heard some horror stories from friends at different surgeries. One friend now emails everything because they have to read it.

Is insane. I even had a situation where on Tuesday morning I needed to cancel an appointment for 10am Tuesday (child made complete recovery overnight, went from being v poorly to fine) and the only way to cancel was to join everyone else in trying to phone at 8am. Finally got through at 9.30. So there’s me in a phone queue on and off for 90 mins trying to make a 10am slot available while other ppl with sick kids are getting told no same day appointments. You’d think they could at least have an email for cancellations.

Another GP practice near me says to get an appointment you have to come to reception at 8am and queue!! So ill OAPs lining up in the frost at 8am to learn if they’ll be seen that day or in two weeks.

A lot of it comes down to the IT being unfit for purpose and I know the NHS are trying very hard and spending millions to improve that.

Such a poorly designed system. I rarely use my GP now, haven’t for years. I tend to try advice from the pharmacy initially, pay private for some things if it’s affordable, or just ignore other things and hope they go away.