‘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?

@QueenPaw. That is shit. As I said, it might be worth checking if there is a hospital where you could get them done, but obviously it depends whereabouts you are. Or you could ask surgery about their extended hours provision. We all have to provide this now, but different surgeries deal with it in different ways, ie, some have early morning and evening phone clinics, some have a late night or early morning surgery (with nurse too) one day a week.

Again depending on where you are, it might be worth checking with other surgeries in the area if they have anything might suit you better. Or you could check out surgeries close to where you work - you no longer have to be registered with a local surgery (although you probably won’t be eligible for home visits if your surgery is out of area, but most people sneed these anyway). Good luck.

Our practice was a month before lockdown but if you really needed it a doc would either call you back or see you. Pain in the arse but standard.
Lockdown has made it so much smoother. Virtual appts and guaranteed call back any day.
All asthmatic, diabetic or pregnant patients got guaranteed appointments always.
I don't think 2 weeks is that bad to be honest for a routine review but see can you get a telephone appointment.

@purplepufferfish my experience is that if you have a very small child and feel stressed enough to (genuinely) cry down the phone line with frustration, they may fit you in ... they may keep a few slots in their back pocket for that, although it probably means the GP won't get home in time to see their own kids before bedtime.

But what frustrates me the most is that the reason they have this system is to meet artificial targets of reducing waiting times ... X% get an appointment within 1 week and Y% get an appointment within 2 weeks ... Yay! .... but nobody ever records the number of days it takes to actually get through on the phone, or the number of people who get no appointment when they do get through, or the number of times they don't call at all because they can't face the stress and hope whatever ails them will just go away on its own instead.

TeenMinusTests Thursday's and Fridays? Tell them I'm on holiday this week

I think part of the problem is they don’t open the book to appointments for more than 4 weeks at my practice so if the GP tells you they want to see you in 3 months you can’t just book in on the way out. it is a whole palaver to trying to organise it. Pre lockdown I tried to get an appointment for heavy periods -been going on for years so happy to wait another 1-2 months to be seen - but no not allowed to book that far in advance have to join in the race for appointments when the book opens.

For non urgent stuff I would gladly fill in a paper/on line request for the GP/practise staff to vet and book at their convenience and just send me an appointment.

There must be a better system, it is one of the worst organised parts of the nhs.

Oops Thursday's and Fridays.

Damn autocorrect Thursdays

We do have a problem at the moment with future appointments too. This is because we’re also running Covid vaccination clinics alongside usual work, and don’t know more than a few days in advance when we’re getting the vaccines. We then have to pull clinicians and staff out of the surgery for the vaccination clinics. If we have fully booked GP clinics, we’d then have to ring all the patients to cancel/rebook.

It’s put terrific additional pressure on surgeries. We had to ring all the over 70s to book their appointments. Under 70s tend to have and use mobiles so easier to text them and direct them to book appointments online. I’m working at one of our vaccination clinics tomorrow - there’ll be two GPs and a NP who would otherwise be working at the surgery, two retired GPs, three admin staff who’d normally be working and three of us going in on our days off.

Ours is 8:15 am. Brilliant when you have 3 primary aged kids NOT.
So many times I have been walking the Kids to school still on hold or redialling. Absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes you can be on hold for over an hour (despite calling at 8:15 precisely) and then yes all the slots have gone.
Other times you do get through but one of the receptionists have told you that your problem doesn’t need to be seen by a gp and won’t book you.
Sorry to say I have had to lie once or twice to even actually get seen because they turn people away.
It’s awful and This is all pre covid. Not sure how it can still be this way in 2021

@TroysMammy

TeenMinusTests Thursday's and Fridays? Tell them I'm on holiday this week

Could be. I know they are planning to ring tomorrow if something hasn't resolved by then. Oh well, they'll be disappointed.

I am so sorry to hear that others are having the same problems.

In response to the comment that I can wait two weeks so it’s not urgent, it’s more the point that I’ve been waiting this long to speak to a GP or medical professional to discuss my test results and symptoms after my previous appointment that I waited two weeks for that I may as well wait another couple of weeks at this point. It’s to do with a potential cardiac issue which I thought would probably be considered a priority and warrant a same day appointment but obviously not.

Thank you for all the replies. I agree that we are of course paying for the service and I do appreciate that. I just didn’t want to come across as attacking the GP directly but I really do appreciate that we are paying for this service and more should be done to improve it.

We have a system that's very similar. Except that, if you want an afternoon/early evening appointment, you have to call at 10am.

Now that's fine if you're at home at 10am. But most people are at work - I work in a school and I can't just whip out my phone at 10am to make a call (sometimes of a personal nature with the receptionist asking you what's the problem so she can triage you to the right person). I would imagine most companies are similar - if you're in a shop it's difficult to get cover at exactly 10am so you can nip off to call.

Which means that, when DS was younger and maybe had a chesty cough or bad ear ache (enough to suggest an infection but well enough to go to school), I couldn't tell the school what time I had to pick him up. On a couple of occasions I've booked an end of school appointment (like 3.15pm) as I couldn't get later and the person on the school reception has forgotten to get him out of class so we've made it by the skin of our teeth.

So I took to getting a mid morning appointment from an 8am call just so that I could get him looked at. Which meant a morning's disruption.

I did complain to the GP manager who said most people have understanding bosses who would let them make appointments at 10am - because she did...utter nonsense.

My main issue is that every request appointment has to have a phone call triage by a Dr now. So speak to a Dr to see if then can have an appointment either on the phone or in person with a nurse or a Dr. Issue then is they choose when they phone you fro triage,

So to get an appointment I have to:

1. phone reception at 8am to get a triage appointment booked.
2. wait for a random time for triage Dr to call
3. get given one choice of a time for booked apt - when I may be working.

Previous system I could look online, book a slot a few weeks ahead when I am not working.

I had to walk out of a lesson in school for a triage apt a few weeks ago! For a fairly urgent need for an appointment ( pregnant and needed antibiotics for UTI - UTI risk in pregnancy) but still able to be in work. I had to get a colleague to cover for me. But there is not always a spare teacher to take a lesson at an unknown time to allow me to do that!!

It is a nightmare.

The NHS is just about never there for most of us. I wish I could just opt out and pay 20% less income tax (the % that goes on the NHS). I have had 7 minutes with my GP in 15 years and a few NHS dental check ups for which I paid the NHS fee.

Oh I had special permission to do this due to being pregnant. But, I would not be allowed to take a call when teaching normally. But cannot ask the triage Dr to call when I am not teaching!!

@Xenia

The NHS is just about never there for most of us. I wish I could just opt out and pay 20% less income tax (the % that goes on the NHS). I have had 7 minutes with my GP in 15 years and a few NHS dental check ups for which I paid the NHS fee.

What do you think would happen to the vulnerable and elderly and babies, for example, if we got to choose the opt out?

Ours is absolutely fantastic and have always run a triage system between 8 and 10 in the morning and at 1pm in the afternoon. You just call the reception and ask to be put on the triage list and the duty GP calls you back. Very often all that is needed is a conversation and a prescription but if they think you need to be seen then they arrange an appointment for you that day.

That’s what ours is theoretically supposed to be. But you can still never get through. We’ve been trying for an issue with DD for two weeks now - it’s not urgent but it does need looking at and neither DH or I have had the phone picked up by the surgery at all.

@Xenia

The NHS is just about never there for most of us. I wish I could just opt out and pay 20% less income tax (the % that goes on the NHS). I have had 7 minutes with my GP in 15 years and a few NHS dental check ups for which I paid the NHS fee.

Will you have a Covid vaccine?

@Xenia

The NHS is just about never there for most of us. I wish I could just opt out and pay 20% less income tax (the % that goes on the NHS). I have had 7 minutes with my GP in 15 years and a few NHS dental check ups for which I paid the NHS fee.

An opt out system would be great and I assume that the nhs would then turn into another health are provider competing on the marketplace, as happens in many European countries.

I used to have private health insurance, cand thars how I ended up getting surgery to remove kidney stones. The nhs, horrifyingly, won't operate to remove them but will instead insert a catheter and leave yiu with it for up to 18 months to see if they remove themselves.

It's also how I got an mri scan and saw a consultant about the result for what turned out to be a fractured medial condyle and torn meniscus. I was refused an mri scan on the nhs, told to ignore the pain and basically had an undiagnosed fractured knee for 6 months which I wasn't resting.

Unfortunately, my monthly premiums went up to near £200 and I could only afford that if I didnt pay for the nhs. The continental systems don't generally allow for increased premiums and ensure a better minimum provision of services for all. I'm thinking of Holland and Germany in particular. You also don't have to go through the unwieldy process of seeing a GP to get referred to a specialist.

My old GP practice used to work like this. It used to drive me crazy. They had that system for all appointments, even the ones two weeks away. I would spend 45 min trying to get through, only to be told to call back tomorrow. It could take me as long as a week to be able to actually make an appointment for two weeks time. On one occasion I drove to the health centre for 8am and made the appointment in person!

Can't book appointments at the local GP unless you ring between 8 and 11. Routine, urgent, non-urgent all have to be booked between those times 🙄 (this is pre-covid) but if I am working, I can't afford to spend an hour+ on the phone just to book an appointment, I am often dealing with emergencies at work.
And if, heaven forbid you phone after 11 wanting an appointment, oh no, no no no, that just can't be done 😐.
I appreciate resources are limited, but this just seems to make no sense?

What do you think would happen to the vulnerable and elderly and babies, for example, if we got to choose the opt out

Not sure they're getting the best care with the system we have now. Primary care is rubbish.

You are doing better than me.
I had a long term problem - was happy to wait weeks and weeks, but no, I could only make an appointment exactly two weeks before, so if the dr worked Tuesdays, I couldn't make an appointment three weeks before that Tuesday, but on a Monday. I could only make it on the Tuesday.
I could also never get through on the phone at 8am so you're doing much better than loads of people!
It's well known that we have major problems with GP availability.

[quote littlepattilou]@gurglebelly

But frankly the appointment systems throughout the NHS are bloody ridiculous. I mean the whole 'sit and wait for a letter' approach from the hospitals is just as bad, because inevitably it's 'sit and wait for a letter, phone them because you can't attend the appointment they have given you, sit and wait for another letter, phone again......'

This ^ pisses me RIGHT off. DH had to go to a certain specialist for a certain course of treatment in 2018, and he had 5 appointments that were meant to be 6 to 8 weeks apart. He had the first one, and instead of just booking him in for the next one, (where he had his works calendar on his phone,) they said they'd send one out!

Every. SINGLE. TIME the appointment was when he was working. Every single time. The first one he booked the day off, but then with the second one, he wasn't able to, and so he had to change the appointment.

Then a week before the appointment, the bookings line called him to cancel, because the specialist 'would not be available,' and another appointment will come out to him. DH said he needs to make the (new) appointment now, on the phone, because of his odd shift patterns, and the high chance the appointment will be when he is at work.

They basically said 'well sorry but you did change the original appointment we gave you.

He said 'yes I cancelled if because I couldn't get the time off! And re-made it for a time I CAN make it. Now when this new appointment comes in a week, the chances are high that I will have to change this too! Can I not just make one over the phone now, while I have my shift pattern in front of me?' They said 'no it doesn't work like that.'

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!

This happened so many times over 5-6 months in 2018, that it almost reduced us to tears of frustration.[/quote]
Oh I know, before covid I got a bollocking from my specialist for not being back to see him soon enough for a routine appointment - but it took 3 rounds of waiting for letters and phoning before I could get an appointment I could do!

And that's not me being inflexible, I'll always move stuff around where I can but one was the day I flew out of the country for 2.5 weeks, the second came through for two weeks later (which given that I had told them that I was out of the country for 3 weeks in the first call really irritated me) and the third was when I was running a 2 day meeting with 20 people from across Europe and it was 11.45 (which basically wiped the day out).

The booking lady sounded most pissed off and suggested that I should have cancelled the meeting, but on what planet do they think it's possible to change a meeting for 20 people (who have flights and accommodation booked) which has been in the diary for months, because of the NHS love of appointment bingo? Once again if I'd been able to book it online or over the phone with my diary in front of me it wouldn't have been an issue, it makes me so cross how inefficient it all is.

@poppycat10

What do you think would happen to the vulnerable and elderly and babies, for example, if we got to choose the opt out

Not sure they're getting the best care with the system we have now. Primary care is rubbish.

Presumably exactly the same as happens with the vulnerable in countries like Holland, Germany and France - the state pays for their care? Why couldn't that happen here?