AIBU to think getting a GP appointment has basically become impossible?

[KelvinWayne]

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been trying to get a GP appointment for something that isn’t an emergency but also isn’t “leave it forever” either.
Phone lines constantly engaged.
Online form opens at 8am and is full by 8:03.
Told to “try again tomorrow” every single time.
I’m not blaming the staff — they’re clearly overwhelmed — but I honestly don’t understand how this is meant to work anymore. What are people supposed to do if they need follow-up, reassurance, or just… to actually be seen?
I keep thinking surely it’s not just me? But then everyone I speak to seems to be in the same boat.
So… AIBU to think the system just isn’t working anymore?
Or am I missing some secret trick that everyone else knows?

Can never get one on the phone here, online keeps crashing, so l just walk in and make an appointment, there is always a queue of people doing the same

I can usually get one. But it’s a postcode lottery. They will have to pride my registration at my GP out of my cold dead hands. I realise I’m very lucky. It’s a nightmare elsewhere.

We have no problems at ours. Online form open 8am - 6.30pm. Always get a response the same day if I submit by mid afternoon, last week I scraped in just before it closed and got a text at 8.30pm. If it’s urgent and I submit the form in the morning we get a same day appointment. If it’s not urgent the wait is normally about 3 weeks.

I know this doesn’t help you OP! But I think it’s important to know that actually there are plenty of GP surgeries operating well, so people at the awful ones don’t just think it’s the same everywhere. It is possible to run a decent practice on the current contracts, so why do some surgeries struggle so much.

Its a nightmare. Effectively three months of pushing for an appointment only to be told "IBS" over the phone with no help on what I might do/take in order to reduce pain. No follow-up up offered. Our surgery no longer has a physical premises so actual face to face appointments are near impossible. The GP is charming but overseas trained and does not instill confidence. She seems to have made quite an alarming mistake when prescribing to a neighbour.

It is not a health service. Thank heavens we now have Dr Google.

The system doesn’t work anymore OP. There are more likely more patients registered than staff available so it’s completely a numbers game.

I agree, it sounds ridiculous. I'm not in the UK but here you can ring the surgery anytime and they will book you an appointment, or you can go online and book one yourself. You will probably have to wait two or three weeks - unless it's urgent of course - but it's still easy to organise an appointment.

The reason that online forms become unavailable/full before the end of the day is to ensure that the staff managing the triage process have a list that they can realistically get through by the end of the day. If any surgery started keeping the online form open until 18:30, there would immediately start being a backlog. Within a fortnight, the triage team would be looking at issues that were submitted 4 days ago that needed an immediate same-day appointment - and people withe severe health issues would deteriorate or even die. That's not a price we should be willing to pay for the convenience of an easier process for our non-urgent issues. If government guidelines require the forms to be open till 18:30 they'd better provide the funding to double the size of the triage team. They aren't going to do that, therefore I would rather they closed the online list so that if it's closed I know my issue won't be triaged today so if it's urgent I'll call 111.

My surgery works really well. They triage you to see how quickly you need to be seen. A long wait (2-3 weeks ) would only be if ir was BOTH non-urgent and you insisted on seeing one particular doc.

I thought it had changed and there had to be availability to book throughout the day, I'm sure I remember Wes announcing it earlier in the year and the GPs complaining about it, maybe it hasn't come in yet

I would normally agree with you OP and here in Wales you normally have to phone early for ANY kind of GP appointment urgent or not. Our surgery has just started offering booking appointments on line which I was able to do, with choice of dates for early January. Can it be Wales NHS pulling their socks up?

Based on family experiences (I'm abroad), almost entirely impossible, especially for anything acute.

I was googling when to see a doctor for a chest infection yesterday. I usually need steroids and antibiotics. It was interesting that NHS advice was to suffer for 3 weeks, while countries with more expensive health systems say to go sooner and even immediately if certain criteria apply.

My surgery used to be dire, the 8am scramble for appointments which would all be gone within five minutes. But they’ve now implemented the online booking system in line with the new rules.

I filled in a form at 4.30 yesterday afternoon and had a text message within 15 minutes giving me a phone consultation on Friday. No time given but fortunately I work from home so can have my phone available all day. A massive improvement from before.

Our GP has some appointments for emergency to be booked on day and some that can be booked in advance for things that can wait. You submit your request online and a doctor triages it and decides what type of appointment you need. Works very well. They used to do the scramble and even then you usually could get an appointment.

Could you email them setting out the problem and see if common sense is triggered? Could you attend in person and see what might happen? Could you formally complain?

Doesn’t really help the op as lots of us are blighted with GP surgeries that have switched to online booking but close it early thus making seeing a GP even harder.

They can close early and are, many are being advised to locally and nationally. We complained and were told just that.

That’s great for you but some of us have got surgeries that say they’re overwhelmed by lunch and some patients are unable to morning scramble to fill forms. It is thus a lot harder to make appointments with the online system than the way it was before.

In my town we can always get an appointment on the day. We are very very lucky . Many patients in this country in effect don't have a GP and rely on A and E.

I worry for my pensioner mum . We all had an email about future bookings having to be done online and she just can not do it . She doesn’t have a smart phone , or the NHS app , wouldn’t know how to use them and at 82 unlikely to be able to learn .

It seems very variable by location. My sister's GP service is like you describe. Mine isn't so bad - I've usually been able to get an on the day appointment if I call at 8 and hang on in the call queue, and if I don't mind who I see ('practitioner' rather than GP) and can to travel to one of their partner practices in the same town if needed. Last time was about a month ago (ear ache) - I haven't tried since this flu outbreak ramped up, it may be harder at the moment.

You can say " there has to be availability to book all day" as much as you like ( or rather Wes Streeting can) but unless staff are available to receive those bookings and to see the patients that can't happen..

Yes mine is overwhelmed by lunch time too. That's normal. As I said, the remedy if we want it would be for central government to make funds available to double the triage staff at every GP practice - for that, we'd need to decide as a nation to start voting for people who say they will raise our taxes (not just the taxes of a nicely distant "other people", our own) - unfortunately we keep letting our politicians know that this would be political suicide so therefore we have to make do with what we are prepared to pay for. It would actually be a lot cheaper and more cost-effective overall for the people who are currently opting out of NHS care and paying for private health services to instead campaign for and commit to a higher tax, higher quality of state-services setup for everyone.

Personally I have kept screenshots of the questions of the annoying online form so that when I need an appointment (which I do every so often as I have some serious long term health conditions) I can pre-write my responses the night before in a Word document, so that when the form opens at 8am it only takes a minute to click through and copy and paste my responses into the form (often multitasking whilst brushing my teeth).

Our GP has a screen set up in the waiting room that's dedicated for people who need support to cope with the form like @hattie43's mum to tackle it with the help of one of the receptionists (who obviously can't make appointments as they aren't trained in the triage that sifts the people who need urgent appointments)

I know it's not ideal but the online system we have now is a million miles better than before, when I'd regularly have to spend half an hour from 8:00 to 8:30 dialling and redialing the GP phone number every 10 seconds to get the automated voice saying the queue was full, then eventually getting through to be allowed to join the queue (it could only handle 50 people waiting on hold in the queue at a time) and then waiting for another 45 minutes to actually speak to someone. That was a lot harder to combine with the school run!

Any GP's still operating under the 8am scramble are not working effectively, nor within government requirements

My GP, for a long time now, a couple of years, operates a triaged online system. Open all morning. All requests are online, emergency and other. You will get a timed slot phone call, a f2f, or a link to book a future appointment, depending on your issue. They send texts to let you know what you are getting.

It works really well.

Edited to add. If you miss the morning triage, and it's not urgent, you can also email the surgery. It obviously takes longer, but they get to those within a couple of days, for non urgent issues.

My surgery's booking system is impossible for me to navigate, despite there generally being same-day appointments available.

I work in home care, starting at 8am. I can join the 8am scramble, and go into my first client a bit late at, say, 8.10.
But, the system is that you leave a message once you get through, and you get a callback from triage within the hour. I can't take the callback as I've started work with my client. You only get one callback - if you miss it, that's it.

I'm low paid, and on a zero hour contract, so I need to put myself down for work on my "days off", just to earn what I need to live on.

I could preserve a day off to try and get an appointment but, if I can't get one, I've missed a day's pay which I can't afford to risk.

I don't have a health emergency as such (thankfully). But, I have run out of my HRT patches, and they won't prescribe me any more until I have a f2f appointment.
I have asked if the Nurse Practitioner or a Pharmacist could do it, but apparently it needs to be the GP.

This is completely unacceptable, I would email the Practice Manager with screen shots of the online forms closing at 8.03am and ask what you are expected to do. Ask what their process is for their patients to get an appointment. Put the problem to the person paid to manage it.

I am fortunate that my GP practice is excellent, however I have only needed an appointment once in the last 2 years. Our chemist is also really good and an under appreciated resource.