To ask if you would pay for GP visits

[justanotherhappyflunkie]

Been talking with various friends who all agree they would rather pay a nominal sum to see a GP rather than the current system.

I have lived in a country that does this (free for children, disabled people, discounts for beneficiaries and long term sickness) and it was great. Same day appointments, good range of doctors, quick referrals.

The UK equivalent of this would be around £20 per visit.

AIBU to suggest it is the system that could help the NHS? prepares for a flaming!

I was assuming you meant children would be exempt (and still I’m against it), but imagine if there was a charge for children’s appointments? Abusive and negligent parents would never book an appointment, they’d be so much tragedy.

They could easily use the current prescription exemption criteria and carry that across to who qualifies for free appointments. That's already done to an extent HOWEVER back in my olde days of community pharmacy, when counting up the scripts at days end it was a very small % of "paid for" scripts.

We would have say 300 items counted as dispensed and say 9 that had been paid for.

The biggest service users of the NHS are those that would qualify for free appointments anyway such as the over 60s.

On another note, the amount of medicines wastage is abysmal. If people were charged even 50p per item (including the over 60s) it would save so much money. When people order their repeats, they would just order the entire job lot every month leading to a massive home stock.

Then it would be returned for destruction. Some of the returns would total over 10k (just for one patient in one pharmacy). Medicines cannot be reused due to leaving the legal pharma supply chain and can't just be reintroduced due to not knowing storage conditions or contamination risks.

So I guess my input is, rather than pay for GP appointments, penalise waste of medicines.

No unless they reduced the amount of NI I pay…

I pay for the nhs via my taxes no way am I going to pay to see a GP…

Neither would I be happy about paying for missed appointments unless the NHS move to a more digital way of working where I get emails and texts not bloody letter. I got a letter telling me I missed my appointment the appointment arrived 2 days, how is that my fault?!?!?

If there was more money in the NHS it wouldn't be such a miserable place to work so maybe more staff would stay rather than resign as lots are currently doing or maybe more young people would be attracted to it as a career.

If you don't think more money would help the NHS, why do you think a government pouring more money in will help? We all moan about the poor old NHS staggering about on it's last legs needing life support itself but where are the positive suggestions for change to make it more viable? I think charging people for appointments if they can afford it (if they currently pay for prescriptions could be a guideline) could be a way to help pay for the services we all use. The other option is higher taxes and that's never popular. At least at the point at which we pay for services we can see the link between giving our money away and getting what we want. People seem too thick to see the link when they demand better services from the NHS yet scream everytime taxes are raised.

"I get a message from my surgery every month reminding people not to miss appointments and stating how many have done so that month - it's always dozens."

But a GP surgery with, say, 5 doctors sees over 800 patients a month, so "dozens" is not many in that context - although I agree that nobody should miss a GP appointment. Penalising people who cannot afford a "fine" or cannot attend due to other reasons (e.g. lack of transport, no childcare, too ill to come) and instigating yet another system to administer this hardly seems the best use of time and resource.

Of course, if people could just walk in and see a GP, there would be no need for appointments at all. The incident that brought home to me what a well-run and properly resourced health service looks like is when I moved the the European country where I now live. I went to register with the local GP surgery and as the most pressing issue I wanted to discuss my on-going medication with the GP. I asked the receptionist if I could book an appointment. She looked at me and said, "No," which rather took me aback. She then said, "If you take a seat over there, a doctor will be able to see you in about 10 minutes." This has been the same procedure for Covid vaccinations, flu jabs, and my annual check-ups - I just turn up and am seen within 15-20 minutes.

This is the level of care available in many European countries, under a variety of finance models.

@Twiglets1 my point was that £20 off eligible patients for appointments is nowhere near enough to make a difference. Most of it will be eaten up in admin costs and it will create huge avalanche of more costly health problems in the future.

Abusive and neglectful parents don't book appointments anyway!

Neglectful parents do take children to the GP when the school or nursery tell them to.

With too many people abusing the system and taking doctors appointments/getting prescriptions rather than buy a packet of aspirin from the supermarket because why not? It's "free".

For most people, a prescription is not free. Unless you're over 60, obtaining a prescription for a child, or have some other exemption, it is considerably more expensive to pay the prescription charge than to buy most OTC medications.

In the country I lived in childrens appointments were charged and then it was changed so they were free. I would never condone a system which charged for children. I completely agree with your point.

I want junior doctors, nurses, ambulance staff to be paid properly. It has to be a job which people want to do! The amount of negative stories about hours, pay and conditions must be so demoralising for people considering a career in the NHS. It's so sad. That being said I wouldn't say the pay is much better in the country I lived in.

Oops - maths wrong in the above post. 5 GPs would be having something like 4,000 patient contacts a month, not 800, so a dozen missed appointments isn't even 0.5% or 1 in 200.

@Havanananana We need to pay more and attract medics to vacancies. We simply do not have enough staff to provide care.

So by your reckoning, for December I would have paid like £80 because of my chronic conditions. Excellent. Definitely affordable if you have to go to the GP more than once a month…

Proper pay and proper resources is what will make the difference. My DH left the NHS and has said he will never go back. He was not a Dr but they can't recruit to the post he left because it is low pay but insanely pressured. He was working way over his paid hours to do the job and was so stressed. It was horrendous.

The amount of bureaucracy and therefore cost that would inevitably come with this makes me twitch just thinking about it

Dept of health via NHS England would put such a cumbersome top heavy command and control compliance system in places it would end up costing more than it ever brought in

No. I have two small nursery aged children, they're sick continuously and we visit the GP often over reoccurring issues. I wouldn't be able to fund this.

no, other countries have tried to implement similar charges and failed. It also stops serious diagnosis such as cancer being detected early. However o do think you should pay for missed appointments !

We have to pay for GP visits in Ireland if we don't have a medical card - you get a medical card if your income is below a certain a certain level or you have certain illnesses or you are a child.
At the practice I go to it's €60 per visit.

Says someone who doesn't work with said parents!

We had 7 missed appointments today if you include nurse appointments.

1 missed was a F2F appointment with a clinician that was booked on the day.

Something like 1 in 10 prescriptions is actually paid for. The amount of people who don't pay for anything is huge, until this elephant in the room is tackled we will continue to have stretched services

@babsanderson We need to pay more and attract medics to vacancies. We simply do not have enough staff to provide care.

I wouldn't disagree with this, but there is more to it than just pay. Hunt abolished the nursing bursary on 2015 when he was Health Secretary, the impact of which is seen 8 years later. Too few staff, too few beds, outdated equipment, poorly maintained buildings and facilities all contribute to the dissatisfaction felt by staff and a deterioration in the service offered to patients.

Instead of treating patients, senior staff are spending time trying to find beds, trying to find nurses or having to explain to patients that their planned operation has yet again been cancelled, and no, they can't tell them when the operation might be re-scheduled. All of this is draining on the staff and has a hugely negative impact on the patients, and on the people caring for or living with these patients.

There are people on this thread talking about how they are frequently at the GP, chronic health conditions should not require weekly GP appointments, that is not sustainable, Similarly young children being taken to the GP for every upset tummy or cough and sniffle, that is an enormous drain on resources.

@Rowthe "We had 7 missed appointments today if you include nurse appointments."

Was that 7 out of 70, or 7 out of 700?

What are the average figures for your practice? What reasons do people give for not attending?

@dollymixtured You do not know anything about chronic health conditions then.