Long wait for doctor's appointment

silvasava

I certainly sympathise with some of the posters on here. My old GP's practice was brilliant. On his own - always able to see him & email for repeat prescription in the morning & it was waiting at the chemists later in the day for you to collect. Then he retired - all his patients were transferred to a group practice - what a change Yes - you could see a doctor the same day - but only if you were prepared to wait for upto 3 hours in a small stuffy waiting room with everyone else who was coughing & spluttering & children & babies unwell & crying - stuck it for a year & changed to another practice that have an appointment system - don't seem to have a problem getting to see a doctor (luckily not had any cause to recently)
I just can't understand how practices in the same area can be so different.

Abbafan1972

You used to be able to book appointments online at our practice, there would only be a couple of doctors available, but now when you log in, it tells you to contact the surgery.

It is difficult to get an appointment quickly with my doctors, they have emergency appointments, but the doctor will know it's an emergency appointment and if it's for something trivial then you will get a lecture off the doctors.

The doctors receptionist usually manages to "squeeze you in", but when you come for the appointment you are the only one in the waiting room!

The receptionists are rude, never smile and don't listen to you. If you ask for a late appointment, they will offer you 10am. They also never make mistakes (yeah right!).

I have been seeing the doctor for some time about a persistent stomach problem and they've told me I have IBS. I wanted to have an Endoscopy and the doctor did write something on the screen about that, but when I queried it, she said it was "just for her notes" and said if I wanted that, I would have to pay and go private! There is bowel cancer in my family and obviously I wanted to rule that out. I saw a different doctor a couple of weeks ago (the female doctor is on maternity leave) and he referred me for the Endoscopy which I had yesterday and they have found something wrong, but I'm hoping it's not serious, I don't think there's any sign of Bowel cancer though. I need to wait for the follow up appointment to come through.

Unbelievable!

zaksmum

Tenyearstogo wrote: »

For those of you that have problems getting appointments, do you complain in writing to the practice manager?

Have complained twice without response.

When a neighbour complained she was phoned at home and asked to come in to a meeting, where three GPs basically told her to get lost and find another doctor.:eek:

katejo

Herongull wrote: »

I was with one practice for nearly 20 years. It went downhill a few years ago in terms of getting appointments - most of the time when I phoned up, the earliest appointment was in 2 weeks time.

So I went to nhs walk-in centres instead, but now most of them within travelling distance have closed.

Assuming that the problem was caused by my practice having taken on too many patients, the only solution was to transfer to a different GP.

I checked out the feedback on local GP practices http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx

I found another local practice got rave reviews from their patients who never seemed to have any trouble getting timely appointments.

I transferred across and yes, my new GP practice is amazing. I always get appointments either the same day or the next day. The receptionists are helpful and the doctors are very good.

I looked at this link to try and find a better GP practice and found that ALL the practices within my reach had bad ratings! None offers online appointment booking, online repeat prescription requests etc. Mine has just switched to same day appointments only (due to patients not turning up). It is really putting me off going.

Housework*Fairy

As a receptionist I would love to be able to offer every single patient that rings an appointment for the time of their choice, the day of their choice, the doctor of their choice, rather than have to spend several minutes every day explaining that we didn't have any appointments.

I wish 'someone' could come up with a workable solution. I really will listen to them and take them back to the powers that be.

I could go on and on but I don't want to be identified by my employers (not that I would slate them in anyway because I think with the resources we have, our patients get excellent treatment) but I will say it is an extremely busy inner-city practice the large proportion of which of the patient's do not have English as their first language.

The doctor's do not have an infinite resource of time in their day. They all come in around 8am and are quite often still there when the office staff go at half six. Even the part time doctors actually work full time when you count up the numbers of hours that they do. They see 16 patients in a morning and afternoon surgery without a break.

We employ one or two locums per day and their appointments are always book-on-the-day and on Friday, for example, one the locums had four patients out of his 32 fail to attend - and this is people who have booked appointments that day, not weeks in advance and just forgot.

As soon as we put appointment slots onto the computers, they are always booked within a short space of time. We have no rhyme or reason how we release appointments they are done randomly just so that patients do have a chance of getting appointments on the offchance. If we, say, did it on a Friday at 11am, the phones would go on meltdown.

In-between surgeries the doctors also have to look at results that have come back, they have prescription requests to action, they have correspondence to look at, they have visits to do, they have to have meetings (such as educational, business, palliative care, primary care that spring to mind). There is so much paper work, it's untrue.

Once all the 'book on the day' appointments are gone, patient's then have to go on a 'call-back' list where the on-call doctors will ring them back. If there is less than a hundred on the day's list, the doctor will be ecstatic because that's a small number. 125 is the average PER DAY but I have seen some days that it has topped 200, usually if we haven't been able to get a locum. Can you imagine how much time it takes to phone back 125 people? Then to write on the computerised records the conversation and print out a prescription?

The bulk of people who come to appointments all generally have minor ailments such as coughs, colds, things they could go and see a pharmacist for but don't. We try to educate the patients but they are still against the idea of self-treating or even 'sitting out their ailments' (colds don't last forever).

We did once have a sit and wait clinic knowing it would be very busy the first few weeks, but it never stopped being busy, so they had to put pay to that. Even our nurses 2 hour clinics for basic things (blood pressure, blood tests) can have 40-50 patients turning up.

For every patient to leave our list there is another 5 waiting to join. They are not people who want a doctor 'just in case', they are people with problems that want sorting yesterday.

It's just a case of demand outstripping supply

pmduk

Housework*Fairy wrote: »

the locums had four patients out of his 32 fail to attend - and this is people who have booked appointments that day, not weeks in advance and just forgot.

So why are those people kept on the practice's books? It should be two strikes and you're off. After all

.

Housework*Fairy wrote: »

For every patient to leave our list there is another 5 waiting to join. They are not people who want a doctor 'just in case', they are people with problems that want sorting yesterday.

It's just a case of demand outstripping supply

Tigsteroonie

Tenyearstogo wrote: »

For those of you that have problems getting appointments, do you complain in writing to the practice manager?

I once attempted to complain to our Practice Manager about the practice's inflexibility when it came to repeat prescriptions (not by phone, not online, and no outside mailbox so you had to drop it in writing during surgery hours).

I got a sharp response saying that I had no right to email her 'personal' (her term) email account. Erm, excuse me, the email address had ".nhs.uk" in it - that means it belongs to the NHS, it's not her personal account :mad:

katejo

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

I once attempted to complain to our Practice Manager about the practice's inflexibility when it came to repeat prescriptions (not by phone, not online, and no outside mailbox so you had to drop it in writing during surgery hours).

I got a sharp response saying that I had no right to email her 'personal' (her term) email account. Erm, excuse me, the email address had ".nhs.uk" in it - that means it belongs to the NHS, it's not her personal account :mad:

My practice is just the same . Sometimes I post it to them but have to allow time in case the form gets lost in the post . Has happened before

Kite2010

If you have a NHS walk-in centre, sometimes it's easier to use that then to wait 4 weeks for an non-urgent appointment.

One local doctors even has a weeks wait for an 'urgent ' appointment.

lemontart

at mine you have to call at 8am for urgent appt but better to actually go down at that time as you will have trouble getting through, on average 2/3 weeks ahead for appt and you stand a chance, I have to go every month so make appt as soon as I come out of seeing a dr that way I can get in when need to ensure get sick notes to work on time.