GP surgery appointments

[Peanut61]

AIBU to not understand why my GP insists on phone appointments.

I am getting so frustrated. I have a couple of issues today and need to see the GP. One of the issues involved a poorly child. And the other needs looking at in person as it’s a physical thing that has potential to turn bad, spoken to pharmacy and first treatment has failed.

call up at 8 on dot, sit in queue for ages. Explain myself in great detail to a non medical receptionist. They only do phone appointments first. So now at some point this afternoon a medical person will call.

im sorry but in my opinion this is a waste of time. They can’t examine a child with fever of unknown origin on phone. They can’t look at my physical issue either. Phone is great for some things but to have that blanket rule is such a waste in my opinion.

is it like this everywhere? Why are GPs insisting on phone appointments first? Does it really save time/money?

surely I’m my case, I’m wasting time and potentially the dr will miss things that could turn bad.

eg if I had a breast lump or a mole that was dodgy or potential tic bite. Would a phone appointment really help?

I should add my surgery is on special measures as it’s so poor! I am looking to change but do are lots. There’s very few doctors there now so it’s even harder to get an appointment.

We also have to ring at 8 for a same-day appointment and while it can be difficult to get through - I always have done so I think my surgery is doing well to be fair

We are thinking of leaving our area and this is one of the issues, our surgery has about 30,000 patients and developers just build more and more flats. The schools are already oversubscribed. The government needs to invest heavily in infrastructure and training and incentivising more GPs and teachers etc.

A big issue with phone "appointments" is that at our surgery they're not really appointments - you have to be available throughout the entire day. This is how it goes now:

• I fill in an online form
• I get a text to say that a clinician will review my contact in twenty eight days
• five weeks later I get a phone call out of the blue, which I miss. Because I'm fucking working.
• I then fill in an online form and the whole process starts again.

I've paid for private GP appointments a couple of times over the past six months just because I needed to get things sorted. And been referred to urgent care by 111 on one occasion. I don't really know what the point of being registered with a public health GP surgery is, now.

Yanbu op. Ours does this and sometimes you want to see someone face to face and just can't. They have also now introduced a one condition per phone call, so if you have two things you'd like to ask about you have to make a separate app and decide which one is the most urgent. And what if the two things are linked, but it might take a while to find out with having the appointments a week or so apart?
I am sure in most circumstances it has saved gps time, but I wonder how many people have the phone call and then get called in anyway? Just seems to double the time taken with the gp at that point.
As for giving the call handler info, I just give very basic info ie gynae issue, or discuss hrt something like that, nothing too detailed.

Six week wait just for a phone appointment at our surgery - yes you read that right 6 weeks!

I don't think this is an issue for GPs though. It's one of those where we come back to NHS underfunding, Government being massively in debt so put up and shut up scenario.
Not sure better education in terms of both keeping healthy long term and what service to use and when will noticably impact the amount of GP care available. There are simply not enough GPs - some practices have multiples more of patients per GP than other practices.
I'd like to see housebuilders when building significant estates be forced to construct the GP premises (like they do for schools as a condition of planning once a development reaches a certain size). (Maybe they do this already so the point of build needs to be a lower threshold). How the funding is put in place to run the practice is beyond me. (I might be able to come with ideas but I don't know how the funding streams work).
Personally I'd pay a fee for my GP consultations BUT that just brings in deeper inequality in healthcare.

My GP surgery is really good, you can book phone or f2f appointments a week in advance for routine things, or on the day for urgent. And they always seem to have appointments available when I have needed them.

However my previous surgery did phone first only, and would say "a doctor will call you sometime in the next 2 weeks" so you had to hope you wouldn't miss the call during an entire 2 week period, which was crazy and basically impossible. It's weird how GP surgeries have such different ways of working.

Well it seems pretty awful everywhere. We are also in a location that has had significant house building.

one estate in our village left a field empty for a new school. The council said it wasn’t needed. It’s still an empty field but won’t be long til they fill it with houses.

we can’t even find GPs to work in the existing surgery so no point building a new one.

too many people here, aging population. Honestly… I’m getting to point where think we should scrap nhs and pay for it differently. Which of course is what government want us to think.

It's long been a patchy bolt on though. They set their own contracts, systems, hours ... There's no consistency or planning to how they operate - usually a practice manager trying and failing to set up a usable appointment system while GPs berate them about not wanting their time wasted. They've always been a law unto themselves but since covid they really are just doing whatever the fuck they want. Loads of them don't even work full time.

If anything they're a good example of how terrible private contracts within public health can be.

The way the GP and role of primary care have changed over the last number of years. A GP has now many options.

While I can see you’re point but again not knowing you, you are not medical. Trust the medical professionals. It is not always the case that you MUST be seen by a GP, Paramedic Paramedic Practitioner or Nurse Practitioner. They are very good at listening and can prescribe over the phone.

This is not taking away the fact that they are in Special Measures with he CQC. You can always go to a walk in centre or urgent treatment centre. Equally the NHS has Livi, you have 111 (I personally hate them) bare in mind they are a advice line and out of hours service

Pre Covid, we had f2f and we could book an appointment within a 2 week timeframe using the online booking system.

Worked well for those of us who work especially, as we could schedule appointments around our work hours and didn’t have to do the mad constant redial at 9am to get an appointment that had to be that day.

Once Covid hit they removed the online booking system and usual f2f and did phone only and you were only asked to attend the surgery for urgent issues or nurse appointments like smears/blood tests etc.

Nearly 3 years later, the online booking system still hasn’t been switched back on. You can’t book a f2f unless it’s for something like a blood test and have to wait for a GP phone call and then they’ll decide if they need to see you. It’s infuriating.

In fact the only thing they’ve changed is they’ve now installed a telephone queuing system so people aren’t having to redial 100+ times at 9am to get through 🙄🙄

Ours used to be good - but since Covid hit - oh my God. I had to get a repeat prescription reviewed recently - rang to book that up straight after I got the text that they'd issued a repeat but wanted to review before next time ...4 week wait for a telephone only appointment.

Telephone appointment day came - no call. Rang surgery the following morning first thing - oh they'll call at some point today - no call. Following day I repeat the same thing again - nada. By this point my repeat medication was running low and it's not stuff you're meant to stop cold-turkey.

Day after I ring the surgery again to a receptionist nearly in tears and I spend about 15 minutes listening to her offload onto me - they finally renewed the repeat for another month and booked in another telephone call with a pharmacist they've brought on to take the medication reviews over... in a fortnight.

I'm very calm and understanding and ever so polite (as seen by the receptionist offloading onto me!) but it was absolutely crazy - I was trying to do induction for a new job while hanging onto my mobile phone in case it rang for nearly a week! Not a great way to start a new job and make an impression!