Metropol

I've got a slight health issue I want checked out by the doctor, and I've left it a couple of weeks thinking it might go away, but it hasn't. Anyway, it appears the local GP surgery with which I was registered has been combined with 4 other local surgeries and moved to the next town.

No longer can I walk into my surgery at 6pm on a weeknight and wait for my name to be called over the loudspeaker. Before I do anything, I have to phone the '---------- Medical Group'. My call is held in a queue for 14 minutes while they play bongo music with a recorded message every few seconds telling me that if I have collapsed or am having crushing chest pains, then to dial 999.

So I eventually get through to a real person, and this is how the conversation goes:

Reception: "Hello ------ Street Surgery, how can I help you?"
Me: "Oh, Hi. I'd like to make an appointment to see the doctor this evening, please."
R: "Okay. Is it urgent?"
Me: "In what way?"
R: "Well, are you in severe pain?"
Me: "No, not really, but I would like to see the doctor."
R: "Yes, I understand that, but it *is* Monday, and we are very busy. Could you wait until tomorrow?"
Me: "Umm, I guess so. Can you give me an appointment for tomorrow evening's surgery, then?"
R: "No, I can't do that. You'll need to call back tomorrow between 8.30am and 10.30am and between 2.30pm and 4.30pm"
Me: "But I've already spent 15 minutes waiting to talk to you. Can I see the doctor tonight, then?"
R: "Unfortunately, unless you are in severe pain, I would strongly advise you to call back tomorrow and make an appointment for tomorrow evening, Sir".
Me: "Okay."
R: "Thank you, sir".
Me: "By...."
[Other end terminates the call]

And to think I actually pay for this shoddy service.

The targets thing isn't awfully helpful but I'm struggling to see where you can call them "shit" based on what I read above, James.

You could have said , "yes it is urgent", but instead you chose to request an advance timeslot.

Unfortunately the system is no longer geared up for people to book illness in advance. If you want to do that then you need to pay for the privilege as Mark suggested. I find the ability to get a same day appointment a boon.

I get quite annoyed to hear people bemoan what is an extraordinary service, free at the point of need.

I stood in the queue to make a follow up appointment at my last visit and heard a big smelly man moaning his ass off about how the doctor was going to write a letter to the housing association to help this man get a 3-bed apartment. The man said, "We get a sheet through the door every day listing the available houses, and there aren't any 3-bed in the area we want. Can't the doctor check the lists for us and tell us when one becomes available?"

I nearly punched him in the back of the neck.

Don't the NHS have enough to do without wiping peoples arses who aren't on the geriatrics ward?

It does get a lot of shit for what is generally a pretty incredible service under a lot of strain.

Echoing the above though, the same-day appointment problem can be quite irritating. My surgery opens the phone lines at 8:30 and by 8:32 the day's appointments are gone. If you fail to get one, they helpfully inform you there is a seperate allocation of appointments if you turn up in person at 8:30, which has got to cut out an insane number of people who might actually need one but can't arrange getting there and back for the slight possibility of an appointment.
The other issue is their definition of 'urgent'. I know they have yet another allocation of these which often go unclaimed simply because most people are reluctant to suggest their problem might be of any urgency (ie. compared to someone that might be dying or something equally rubbish, which tends to be outwith the scope of most GP appointments). There's also a form to get filled in to try and back up your claim of urgency which I'm sure isn't at all off-putting.

Ultimately though, these kind of irritations are so superficial.

Gavin Scott wrote:free at the point of need.

That's the one part of the NHS description which very much gets up my nose.

Say whatever you want about the remainder of the service, but when they charge you £2.50 an hour, or part thereof, to park at your particular point of need, it makes me mad.

£2.50 to park for a three minute radiotherapy appointment is severely extracting the urine in my opinion. Especially when you need thirty sessions on consecutive days. Oh yes, they'll sort out your cancer, but make sure you've got a spare £75 for the parking.

Royal United Hospital in Bath have recently changed their system from pay in advance to pay on exit, which means you now pay for all the extra time your consultant keeps you waiting because he's running two hours late. Under the old system they allowed you lots of grace on the tickets because they knew that exactly that always happened.

It's like when you ring a premium rate number and they deliberately keep you talking for far longer than necessary so they can make more money.

Thinking about it, 0845 has now been re-classified with the premium rate numbers, hasn't it. Now, what's the number for NHS Direct?

My mother works for a local NHS service and you wouldn't believe the trouble they get and the unfair bosses.

I phone the Doctors to make an appointment, ( today 8th)

so I ask can anything for this week...Answer No:

so what about next week.... Answer no:

SO WHEN can I get one...

Tuesday 23th October at 9am

what even happen to " you can see a NHS GP with 48 hours!

Yeah but you have a special clinic to go to.

Jamez raises a valid point, the same day booking system is just a ridiculous lottery.

You don't know if you can get the time off work for starters for whatever appointment they come up with, and you can't ask in advance because you can't find out until the day you make the appointment. You wait until 08:30, hit the phone lines only to find it would probably be easier to get selected on air by ITV Play than it is to get through to your GP.

45 minutes of constant redial you finally get through, the receptionist makes an attempt to self diagnose and if you can manage to convince her it's urgent enough and it's not something the nurse could help with, she'll let you make an appointment to see the GP, even then you can't guarantee to see the one that's seen you for years and know's your entire medical history.

Then there's the dentist .....

Mine's fine. Therefore they're all fine.

Oh my NHS dentist is superb. I *never* have to wait in the waiting room and on the 2 occasions over the last 18 mths or so I've needed urgent treatment they've said "Okay, can you be here in 20 minutes? The dentist will be happy to see you". Got there, whisked straight through to the treatment room, had the stuff done and was back in work 30 mins later - albeit with a numb mouth!

I really cannot fault the efficiency and helpfulness of my NHS dentist.

nodnirG kraM wrote:I'd say that's quite good value over all - £75 to delay a terminal condition.

The car park fees are after all nothing more than another cliched stealth tax used to prop up the health service; only this one is only being paid by those who are using the health service - therefore as I've said, I rarely visit hospitals, so I pay less "vehicle allocation tax". People who withdraw funds from the NHS on a daily basis will pay more of this "patient transportation fee".

I take all of your points.

But whatever you call the £75, either humorously or seriously, your first line says it all. The NHS is damn well NOT free at the point of need, which is why I DO get annoyed when people keep on labouring that particular phrase.