I mentioned this as an answer on another thread but I thought it may make an interesting discussion in its own right.
I've recently had to make a GP appointment. I hardly ever go to my GP, I'm terrible at waiting until things are really bad before I seek help, and for minor illnesses I just buy over the counter stuff and assume my immune system will sort it out (which it always has done so far), so I had no idea that I was unable to book a routine appointment at my surgery any longer. Instead, I had to fill in an online form. I then got a phone call within 24 hours saying the GP would like to see me and an appointment was then made for me. I was told that I could of course have made an appointment for an urgent problem (and that this would be triaged to assess whether it was actually urgent), but that routine appointments were no longer a thing you could book yourself.
I'm not sure what I think of this system - I guess it weeds out time wasters and the worried well, and allows doctors to maybe phone them to reassure rather than use up slots, but it seemed odd that I couldn't make an appointment. Is this the way GPs all operate now? What do people think of it? I was able to easily get my problem across on the online form but I worry about the very elderly. I wonder if this is contributing to the queues in Emergency Departments.
To obliterate your address on packaging
Good Morning Good Friday 29th March 2024
Water Pollution -“ A National Disgrace”? A case for renationalisation?