It’s completely normal for me to wait that long. In fact, it’s an improvement since I got a place at a decent practice. I couldn’t even get signed up with a GP for 3.5 years after I moved. When I finally did, I only got one phone appointment in a year. It wasn’t until I had a cancer scare that a decent GP signed me up and I have always waited well over a month for an appointment.
What this article is actually saying is that entitled Boomers who voted for the chaos but haven’t had to deal with it because they don’t have to move for work are finally having to deal with problems.
boycecodd on
This analysis is going to have come from the [GP Appointments Dashboard](https://digital.nhs.uk/dashboards/gp-appointments-data-dashboard). I’ve worked a fair bit with its data and it’s pretty much impossible to make conclusions about quality of care like this using it.
This is because the “time between booking and appointment” says nothing in isolation without knowing the intent of the patient. A four week wait is appalling if you have an urgent issue, but it’s absolutely brilliant if you are booking a planned follow-up with your GP. And yet there’s an assumption baked into the Lib Dems report that four weeks is unacceptable.
I could even hazard a guess that a rise in long-wait appointments might even be a sign that the hateful “you must book on the day” system is beginning to go away, and the disparity in areas might just mean that the ICBs in those areas are handing down instructions to accommodate follow up and non-urgent bookings.
In order for data like this to be any use, we need to be able to honestly capture the intent of the patient at the time of booking, and that would need to be done honestly by GP surgeries (unfortunately, there is a minority of GP surgeries who would do anything to make their stats look good and increase payments).
TheFansHitTheShit on
I’ve been having to wait 4 weeks for appointments for well over 5 years now, though if it’s something a little more urgent, you can ring up for a call back from a doctor (usually the same day depending on what time you call) and they will fit you in that day or the next.
Rowcoy on
It’s actually kind of scary the surgery I work at all the GP appointments are booked up well into November and we haven’t even hit the seasonal surges of Covid/flu/scarlet fever yet! I’m not sure what we do when that happens as we only have 50-100 on the day appointments available each day yet during these surges in demand we can easily get 400 requests for an on the day appointment.
OriginalZumbie on
My GP and most in the area have an online query option they ask you to go through which has a same day response. But it’s not exactly reassuring to communicate through apps or emails about a health issue.
5 Comments
It’s completely normal for me to wait that long. In fact, it’s an improvement since I got a place at a decent practice. I couldn’t even get signed up with a GP for 3.5 years after I moved. When I finally did, I only got one phone appointment in a year. It wasn’t until I had a cancer scare that a decent GP signed me up and I have always waited well over a month for an appointment.
What this article is actually saying is that entitled Boomers who voted for the chaos but haven’t had to deal with it because they don’t have to move for work are finally having to deal with problems.
This analysis is going to have come from the [GP Appointments Dashboard](https://digital.nhs.uk/dashboards/gp-appointments-data-dashboard). I’ve worked a fair bit with its data and it’s pretty much impossible to make conclusions about quality of care like this using it.
This is because the “time between booking and appointment” says nothing in isolation without knowing the intent of the patient. A four week wait is appalling if you have an urgent issue, but it’s absolutely brilliant if you are booking a planned follow-up with your GP. And yet there’s an assumption baked into the Lib Dems report that four weeks is unacceptable.
I could even hazard a guess that a rise in long-wait appointments might even be a sign that the hateful “you must book on the day” system is beginning to go away, and the disparity in areas might just mean that the ICBs in those areas are handing down instructions to accommodate follow up and non-urgent bookings.
In order for data like this to be any use, we need to be able to honestly capture the intent of the patient at the time of booking, and that would need to be done honestly by GP surgeries (unfortunately, there is a minority of GP surgeries who would do anything to make their stats look good and increase payments).
I’ve been having to wait 4 weeks for appointments for well over 5 years now, though if it’s something a little more urgent, you can ring up for a call back from a doctor (usually the same day depending on what time you call) and they will fit you in that day or the next.
It’s actually kind of scary the surgery I work at all the GP appointments are booked up well into November and we haven’t even hit the seasonal surges of Covid/flu/scarlet fever yet! I’m not sure what we do when that happens as we only have 50-100 on the day appointments available each day yet during these surges in demand we can easily get 400 requests for an on the day appointment.
My GP and most in the area have an online query option they ask you to go through which has a same day response. But it’s not exactly reassuring to communicate through apps or emails about a health issue.