Doctors appointments, or not as the case may be.

How very frustrating, and dangerous too.

Parents of children who have to take kids to school just cannot get to a phone at that time of day, then have to go to work- and can't hang around as you describe. Just dreadful!

It seems that the rest of the country is almost back to the pre-covid way of working, except for GP's. These telephone and video appointments are not popular, but seem to be the new way GP's are now working.
The system is broken, please get it fixed!

As opposed to the above experience, DH rang atv8 am was seem at 10 by the gp and had a physio appointment, in the practice, at 10.30.

My daughters have no problem getting the children or themselves appointments either.

that is great news kitty. Are they available at 8 to be by the phone for a very long time and able to sit around until someone rings back?

Mine are in the car to drive to school at 7.45 then have to go to work. So practically impossible as not possible by e-mail of any other way.

kitty, can we move in with you please? Here unless a very urgent issue it’s necessary to complete an online form. If a patient doesn’t have access to the web a call is made to the surgery and a staff member completed the form. The earliest a response is received is 72 hours from the next morning. An appointment could then take a further four weeks. On the positive side all appointments are face to face.

It’s impossible to recruit GPs here. An increasing patient load is proving impossible to manage. We’re both unwell at the moment, not good timing.

It's a nightmare trying to get an appointment at our local surgery. You can't book a routine appointment in advance (unless it's for something like blood tests with a nurse). You have to ring at 8.30am and the lines are always engaged - if they get too busy, it simply cuts you off. If you do manage to get through, you're told they only have emergency appointments and a GP will ring you back to determine if you need a face-to-face appointment or not. I had to go into the surgery last week for a blood test, and there's a big sign at reception which says you cannot make an appointment at the desk and must phone instead, so you could have the farcical situation of someone sitting there, feet away from the receptionists, and having to phone them! I have to say that once you do actually get to speak to or see a GP, they service is usually great, but it's the rigmarole you have to go through to get to that stage....

kittylester

As opposed to the above experience, DH rang atv8 am was seem at 10 by the gp and had a physio appointment, in the practice, at 10.30.

My daughters have no problem getting the children or themselves appointments either.

That’s good news for your family, but I think there are many areas where people are having very different experiences. My daughter lives in Gloucester and has been trying to get through to her surgery for 2 days now - the answerphone simply says “There are no appointments available today”.

We have not be able to see a Dr since COVID started the surgery is still a no go area. The Drs are and have been at the surgery but are only doing phone consultations.
At best the surgery nurse is on duty that's not much help as she never has available appointments.
The Walk in centre is next door has a permanent queue right around the building. Most of the people have queued for hours and are simply told go to the Drs or hospital.

We have been back to normal for about a month now.
I phoned last Friday, got an appointment for Monday morning.
Blood test at the same time.
Got the blood test result back yesterday, seeing Dr tomorrow morning. Yes, we do have a surgery Saturday morning.
This is only for my iron levels. Brilliant 😊

Our GP practice has this month extended its hours 8am - 8pm Mon- Fri along with 9 - 5 Saturday.
DD has rang at gone 9 twice and had an appointment on the same day, cannot fault the 2023 system 👏👏

(DD was only able to get 2 telephone appointments in December, which is why she ended up so poorly post Christmas)

Redhead
That’s awful. Our surgery never shut. I have a B12 injection every 2 months, that never stopped.

fleurpepper, on the contrary, all 3 daughters do the school run and have demanding jobs.

Would be very interested then, what is the process for making appointments? Most doctors now require that you ring at 8am. and keep ringing for a very long time- and hope to get through, or then wait by the phone for someone to ring back. Which is just impossible. They are very lucky if it is simpler for them.

The village I live in has a surgery which uses the old fashioned method in that you go in between 8 and 11am and take a number, that is where you are in the queue. They usually manage to see every one that attends the same day.

Unfortunately I am not registered with that surgery.

DH is dreading coming out of hospital and having no access to immediate medical care. He is supposed to be seen within 7 days but I expect it will be a telephone appointment in three weeks!
He would love to see the same GP each time, but that rarely happens.
What can you achieve in a 10 minute appointment when you have several serious conditions? His consultant in hospital said his two main issues ( heart and diabetes) should have been reviewed by a specialist several years ago. That is not a criticism of his GP practice but of the system.
So if you need an urgent appointment you have to ring ( join the queue) at 8 am. If it is too busy you get cut off. If you get through, if you are lucky, a doctor rings you back and decides whether you need to be seen. If it is not urgent, you ring after 10 and you might get an appointment within three weeks. Or not.

We have ‘Ask My GP’ which seems to work well, and we usually get contacted same day.

Used to be available 8am-4pm, but is now reducing to 8am- 1pm because of increased demand!

Fleurpepper

Would be very interested then, what is the process for making appointments? Most doctors now require that you ring at 8am. and keep ringing for a very long time- and hope to get through, or then wait by the phone for someone to ring back. Which is just impossible. They are very lucky if it is simpler for them.

Most doctors

I think practices have their own systems.

Here we phone and may be in a queue to be answered which could take some time (or not sometimes) as the receptionist has to ask a lot of questions, a kind of triage.
Then, if urgent, a precise appointment time is given for a phone call from a GP or, occasionally, they may phone later to say a GP wants to see you in person.

If not urgent, an appointment could be some weeks hence.

Sometimes I join the queue outside the surgery at 7.45 am to get an appointment. It has proved effective.

OH called at 8.30 ,had a face to face appointment at five past ten and was sent for an MRI this afternoon .GP believes his prostate issue is benign but as one of our close friends was given a terminal diagnosis a year ago and told a year to 18 months we're all a bit edgy about prostate problems .
OH has been told he'll get his result at the start of the week.

We haven't really had problems seeing GP ,we've both had any tests and check ups we were due and OH had a scan for an aneurysm during covid that he wasn't expecting.Very happy to get it though as its what his dad died of at the age he is now .

I had a doctors appointment last week. In the waiting room was a large notice saying that in December 185 appointments had been made but not kept. That means that 185 who could have had appointments did not get one. The GP system at the moment is absolutely dire, but there should be some means of penalising people who do not keep their appointments but don't let the surgery know.

The GP i had been seeing for 20 years retired at the beginning of lockdown. It's very difficult now to get an appointment at all but my real problem is that if I speak to a doctor it's always a different one. I get random phone calls or texts from people I've never met. One wants a blood pressure reading, another one wants a blood test because she isn't happy about my kidneys, someone else is worrying about my diet in case I become diabetic and yet another wants me on a diuretic. None of this is ever joined up and they never seem to talk to each other.

Thank goodness my surgery has stopped the "ring at 8 palaver" or, even worse, the queue outside at 8 palaver" because many people have other things to do at 8.

We now have a "fill in an online form at 8 palaver", which was introduced a couple of months ago.

There are two advantages:

1 People can write the contents of the form in advance and paste it into the form at 8. If they leave it much later, the surgery shuts down access to the form until they have dealt with all the requests. Sometimes it opens again in the afternoon. Apparently, people who can't fill in the form can ring, but there are many complaints that the phone just isn't being answered. Whenever I've sent in a form, it has been dealt with within 24 hours.

2 People can request advance routine appointments rather than "on the day" appointments, which should only be for emergencies.

The problems with the above that people just can't be seen in emergencies - and that includes children, so they end up ringing 111 or going to the minor injuries unit.

Despite the (slightly) improved system, the surgery still doesn't have enough doctors. It would appear they've employed an extra nurse and a clinical pharmacist over the last couple of months. I understand the pharmacist is dealing with repeat prescriptions, which hopefully takes some pressure off the GPs.

Covid isn't to blame for this. It was just as bad before Covid. The problem is that the town has expanded and although the practice has a brand new, modern surgery, there just aren't enough staff. Ideally, there needs to be an additional practice.

Lizbethann55

I had a doctors appointment last week. In the waiting room was a large notice saying that in December 185 appointments had been made but not kept. That means that 185 who could have had appointments did not get one. The GP system at the moment is absolutely dire, but there should be some means of penalising people who do not keep their appointments but don't let the surgery know.

That might work if the records were accurate.

I've recently been given access to my patient records and I was shocked to see how many "did not attends" I had. I cross referenced them with my diary and discovered that phone calls which I hadn't been able to answer (because they had come at times I wasn't expecting or I just hadn't been able to get to the phone on time) have been recorded as DNAs. They have also recorded letters requesting I made an appointment, but which I hadn't responded to, as DNAs. At no stage had I ever made an appointment. I remember that on one occasion I didn't make a new appointment because I already had one.

Cabbie21

DH is dreading coming out of hospital and having no access to immediate medical care. He is supposed to be seen within 7 days but I expect it will be a telephone appointment in three weeks!
He would love to see the same GP each time, but that rarely happens.
What can you achieve in a 10 minute appointment when you have several serious conditions? His consultant in hospital said his two main issues ( heart and diabetes) should have been reviewed by a specialist several years ago. That is not a criticism of his GP practice but of the system.
So if you need an urgent appointment you have to ring ( join the queue) at 8 am. If it is too busy you get cut off. If you get through, if you are lucky, a doctor rings you back and decides whether you need to be seen. If it is not urgent, you ring after 10 and you might get an appointment within three weeks. Or not.

Good luck!

Sorry to tell you this, but I had the same situation when I came out of hospital after a heart attack (I'm diabetic too) and had to wait five weeks for an appointment. Meanwhile, I was without the medications the hospital had said should be prescribed. That was in 2017.