“I wonder if you could help me; I would like to book an appointment with the doctor today.”
“I’m sorry, there are no appointments available today.”
How many times have you had this conversation with the receptionist at your GP?
How many times have you had to take time off work with the hope of getting a doctor’s appointment on the day, and you’ve failed?
How many times have you just bypassed the GP and gone to the Walk-in Centre or A&E?
Unfortunately, this is quite a common incident. When you go to the doctors, you see on the walls a sign that usually states the number of people that missed their appointment last month – frequently between 25-45 people.
Last month, I had a chesty cough that I couldn’t get rid of. I tried to get an appointment to get antibiotics, but failed. As most people do when their ailment is not critical, I ignored the problem and went about my day-to-day activities, trying to just carry on. Now, a month later and several calls to the GP, I’ve made an appointment because the chesty cough is now a booming-echoing-wrench-of-a-cough.
I felt the anger boiling inside when I saw that 37 people missed their appointment last month. 37?! That’s quite a high number of patients to not bother coming to their appointment.
The BBC News website reported that ‘missed appointments cost the NHS more than £600m a year – the cost of running two medium sized hospitals. But as well as the cost and inconvenience, some patients are risking their lives by not attending. Figures show that patients miss around 10m GP and 5m practice nurse appointments each year.’
Why? Who is doing this? ‘A man with bipolar disorder made an emergency appointment with his GP, saying he felt very depressed. When he failed to attend though, the practice took no action. Sadly, the man was admitted to hospital the next day having taken an overdose.’ It’s not always the unemployed as most would assume.
After seeing the doctor, he came to the conclusion I had Chronic Bronchitis and prescribed to me 1000mg/day Clarithromycin and 30mg/day steroids for seven days. Now after nearly two weeks I’ve still got a cough and a rattle in my chest. I plan to make an appointment at the beginning of next week to see the doctor, but I’m not confident I will get one.
If I don’t book one, what do I do?
It’s not an A&E matter and the Walk-in Centre isn’t really a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin option, because you have to call in advance and book – sometimes they’re fully booked too!
What if the GP practice opened at 7.30am and closed at 7.30pm daily, including weekends?
It would mean that we would need to employ more GP’s across the country decreasing unemployment. It would mean that GP’s could work a standard 37.5 hour week therefore encourage a better basic pay rate. It would mean that patients get a better quality of service.
It would also however take a lot of energy and time and there would definitely need to be a change-over period nationwide. They did just find £850m out of thin air for half of the EU bill though…
#justsayin
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