NHS Doctors not helping themselves?

They likely don’t know if people cancel until they don’t show up.

I wish it was three weeks here.

It's six to seven weeks wait unless it's an emergency but phone after 9.00 am and all the urgent appointments are taken anyway.

They probably double book, in the manner of airlines. If they know that X% of people won't show up they can make that number of 'extra' appointments to compensate.

But do you see a GP after your long wait. We hadn’t seen a GP at our surgery for well over a year if not longer, we saw nurses, and assistant physicians but no GP. And after my husband had a stroke earlier this year and three bleeds on the brain it was still 5/6 months after his discharge before we managed to see an actual GP and he was a locum.

No, Babs03, often it's a nurse practitioner.

Just to point out - General Practitioners are not directly employed by the NHS. They are contracted to the NHS and their practices are run as businesses.

Babs03

But do you see a GP after your long wait. We hadn’t seen a GP at our surgery for well over a year if not longer, we saw nurses, and assistant physicians but no GP. And after my husband had a stroke earlier this year and three bleeds on the brain it was still 5/6 months after his discharge before we managed to see an actual GP and he was a locum.

Same here Babs03. Seems after a stroke nobody cares. After 3 months in hospital my husband asked to come home as he was getting no physio. After a further month at home he had a few health issues so for the first time in our lives we asked for a home visit.

Receptionist said to take him to surgery. I said he cannot stand unaided, cannot walk and cannot get in a car. She said I wasn’t on the home visits list! She got the on call GP to ring me and she also tried to get me to take him. I explained it all again although they would have received all his discharge notes had they bothered to read them. She grudgingly came and wasn’t in our house 5 minutes.

I think they still have doctors at my medical centre, if I need anything I phone up, a doctor phones back and I get what I need. Other times I go for a blood test or vaccination but it’s always a nurse.
Very efficient even phone waits are short

Allira

Just to point out - General Practitioners are not directly employed by the NHS. They are contracted to the NHS and their practices are run as businesses.

This is true

Our gps have improved since covid...all appointments are same day...regardless of urgency....as long as you get on the queue at 8am you will get an appointment

Doodledog

They probably double book, in the manner of airlines. If they know that X% of people won't show up they can make that number of 'extra' appointments to compensate.

My dd doesn’t. If there’s a no-show she uses the time to write up patient notes, send referrals and research more complicated cases that require more attention. If she’s lucky, she might even get half an hour in which to get her lunch!

@Primrose53
You could be telling my story. I do sympathise. As if your DH and yourself haven’t been through enough.
As for reading discharge notes I had to take my copy in 3 times to reception because they were not prescribing the new drugs the hospital said he should be on, each time they copied the notes and each time they got it wrong. Eventually I saw an assistant physician who looked it up online and there were the discharge notes clear as day telling him which new drugs my husband now needs.
Is such an uphill struggle.

David49

I think they still have doctors at my medical centre, if I need anything I phone up, a doctor phones back and I get what I need. Other times I go for a blood test or vaccination but it’s always a nurse.
Very efficient even phone waits are short

Out of curiosity David, where are you from?
You don’t need to give your immediate location just the county will do.
I am from the SE, in Essex. Things are pretty grim here.

We are very lucky in our surgery ( Southend) you can get a morning or afternoon appointment.
And now we are going to have a new health centre in the town centre.
Open 7 days a week.

www.echo-news.co.uk/news/25459450.former-argos-confirmed-site-southend-health-centre/

I’m not sure why you’re blaming the doctors? Did you know that the average number of patients per full-time GP in England has risen from 1,938 in 2015 to 2,257 in 2025? And we are getting older as a society with most healthcare being needed by older people. Chronic disease management is being shifted out of hospital to primary care for everyone’s convenience apart from the GPs. Funding for GPs is complicated but GPs don’t have a guaranteed income (unless they are salaried), so practices are closing because they are not viable.

My surgery it tops, mostly. If they run out of same day apppointments and someone rings in very great need, unless its an A and E matter, they will make the time. ]

They understand that some people for whatever reason cant remember or has been due to the illness. MH confusion, for example, or people who are no longer "quite with us" for one reason or another.

There is also a drop in centre in town open to all where you will be seen unless you arrive near closing time - it's open 8am to 10pm at night. Big city/town advantage and as people say, regional.
I live in an attractive city for professionals to live in, makes a huge difference: and although I have specific grumbles about one GP or another, it's a benign and happy place to work in.

At my surgery you can only ring after 9am for an appointment. However, you can go in person at 8am. Hence, we turn up at 8am and get one.

argymargy

I’m not sure why you’re blaming the doctors? Did you know that the average number of patients per full-time GP in England has risen from 1,938 in 2015 to 2,257 in 2025? And we are getting older as a society with most healthcare being needed by older people. Chronic disease management is being shifted out of hospital to primary care for everyone’s convenience apart from the GPs. Funding for GPs is complicated but GPs don’t have a guaranteed income (unless they are salaried), so practices are closing because they are not viable.

Down to the government then, to get it sorted. Ridiculous I have to wait three weeks for a urine infection. Told to go to urgent care

Is it a case of too many patients or not enough Doctors?

My practice, which serves aound 40,000 patients, reports the number of missed appointments called DNA “did not attend”. I assume other practices do too.

In August 2025, 333, or an average of 15 appointments a day, were missed.

Each appointment is for 10 minutes. 150 minutes, two and half hours a day.

This isn’t a new issue. The practice has been reporting similar numbers for many years.

Like most practices, there is usually a long wait in a queue to speak to a receptionist but there is also an online form to cancel an appointment or people could also call into the surgery to cancel. It’s an urban area.

I suspect many people just don’t bother.

I would hazard a guess that the surgery has more DNAs than cancellations and obviously, the surgery won’t know someone is DNA until they DNA.

There is not much excuse for accidentally forgetting an appointment as the surgery sends repeated text reminders right up to immediately before the appointment - unless someone doesn’t use a mobile phone which might be possible for some patients.

PaynesGrey

My practice, which serves aound 40,000 patients, reports the number of missed appointments called DNA “did not attend”. I assume other practices do too.

In August 2025, 333, or an average of 15 appointments a day, were missed.

Each appointment is for 10 minutes. 150 minutes, two and half hours a day.

This isn’t a new issue. The practice has been reporting similar numbers for many years.

Like most practices, there is usually a long wait in a queue to speak to a receptionist but there is also an online form to cancel an appointment or people could also call into the surgery to cancel. It’s an urban area.

I suspect many people just don’t bother.

I would hazard a guess that the surgery has more DNAs than cancellations and obviously, the surgery won’t know someone is DNA until they DNA.

There is not much excuse for accidentally forgetting an appointment as the surgery sends repeated text reminders right up to immediately before the appointment - unless someone doesn’t use a mobile phone which might be possible for some patients.

I believe all practices record DNAs. Ours does, but unlike yours there is no special number to ring to cancel which is crazy.

It is quite usual to ring our practice to be told you are number 10 or 12 in a queue. If you can’t get through then you can’t cancel your appt and you become a DNA.

Primrose53

PaynesGrey

My practice, which serves aound 40,000 patients, reports the number of missed appointments called DNA “did not attend”. I assume other practices do too.

In August 2025, 333, or an average of 15 appointments a day, were missed.

Each appointment is for 10 minutes. 150 minutes, two and half hours a day.

This isn’t a new issue. The practice has been reporting similar numbers for many years.

Like most practices, there is usually a long wait in a queue to speak to a receptionist but there is also an online form to cancel an appointment or people could also call into the surgery to cancel. It’s an urban area.

I suspect many people just don’t bother.

I would hazard a guess that the surgery has more DNAs than cancellations and obviously, the surgery won’t know someone is DNA until they DNA.

There is not much excuse for accidentally forgetting an appointment as the surgery sends repeated text reminders right up to immediately before the appointment - unless someone doesn’t use a mobile phone which might be possible for some patients.

I believe all practices record DNAs. Ours does, but unlike yours there is no special number to ring to cancel which is crazy.

It is quite usual to ring our practice to be told you are number 10 or 12 in a queue. If you can’t get through then you can’t cancel your appt and you become a DNA.

Same here, Primrose

Nor does our surgery send out any text messages to confirm appointments.

It's rare that either of us would forget an appointment but DH suddenly realised that he should have gone to see the nurse to give blood the other week. The clinic was still running that afternoon. He rushed there, about three-quarters of an hour late and the receptionist refused to let him go through. I said to him that some patients would have arrived early and so he could have been tagged on at the end instead of having to make another appointment.

Ours has a good system (sorry, I realise that's not what those with frustrating ones want to hear, but I mention it to show that it can be done). You go online and fill in a form with a brief description of the problem. You are guided through it with questions about how long it has been going on, what you want from the surgery (eg a consultation, a change of meds or whatever) whether it's getting worse and so on, so the triage team have enough information to work with. You can ask questions, too.

The forms are triaged twice a day and you get a call back (sometimes within the hour) to resolve it. You might get a call from a GP or nurse, or the receptionist might call to make an appointment, to tell you that your meds have been changed and will be at the chemist by tomorrow, or to pass on an answer to a question. Sometimes a GP will answer questions by text if they are straightforward. It is all very efficient.

As an example of the efficiency, Mr D had an odd-looking lump on his head, which he couldn't see, but I could. He kept saying it was fine, and put off getting it looked at, as men can be won't to do🙄. I took a photo and uploaded it to the system, said I was concerned and asked for advice, leaving his number so they didn't need to worry about speaking to me about him and breaking confidentiality. Within an hour he got a call asking him to come straight to the surgery, where a nurse practitioner said it was a basal cell carcinoma and prescribed some ointment to zap it. From my message to his applying the first lot of ointment took a couple of hours. You couldn't ask for better service.

It is so much better than the 8.00am scramble, but people still moan. The receptionist will fill in the form over the phone for anyone unable to do it themselves, but that that leads to complaints about having to tell the receptionist the nature of the problem, and people don't want to be triaged - they want to speak to a GP immediately, which is just not efficient and leads to longer queues for everyone else.

There are downsides around having to talk on the phone for patients who don't have privacy. You can't specify a time for a call back, but you can say when you are not available. Now that I am retired I don't need to do that, so can't say how well it works, but I assume they take working hours/commuting time etc into account.

I don't know whose responsibility it is to sort things out. Surgeries are businesses now, so the government can't impose systems (or can they?), but they could employ more GPs and other staff. My home town has nearly doubled in size since we moved here, but the number of GPs has stayed the same, and most of them are part-time. Things have declined over the past 15 years, so it can't be reversed by tomorrow, but I'd like to see a move towards a reasonable cap on the number of patients per GP in any surgery, and that would mean government involvement.

My home town has nearly doubled in size since we moved here, but the number of GPs has stayed the same, and most of them are part-time.

The same here, a big increase in population! And full-time GPs have been replaced by the same number of part-time GPs with a few locums who appear then disappear with regularity.