The article gives two justifications for GPs refusing to switch back to face to face appointments:
1) Some patients are abusive
2) GPs have too many patients and many feel stressed
Neither of those change the fact that they’re drawing a salary for a job that they aren’t doing. You can’t just hide behind a phone because people are mean and you’re stressed, it’s meant to be a customer facing job.
Sob stories aside, if a GP is refusing f2f appointments that it their decision, so ultimately their fault.
It is actually assuming he’s the GP. He’s paid per person on his roles and he has committed to give them all appointments. If he can’t fit you in, he needs to be less of a greedy fuck and take less money and free it up for the next doctor.
Well, the way I see it, as GP clinics are businesses contracted to supply GP services to the NHS, so the buck stops with them if for what ever reason if they can’t for fill those obligations.
It might not be your actual doctors fault, but it is the fault of the organisation that they work for.
Doctors in the UK took 10-15 years to setup basic IT systems in their surgeries so people could make online appointments, that was a looming big red flag signaling its disarray. The contracts are all a complicated mess as well. Simply make all surgeries private, then let them claim money back from the government or let people rebate the cost of care like many other countries do. Money lost if you don’t turn up.
As someone who has twice had the same condition escalate until it cost the NHS and economy (and me) far more time and money to treat than it should have I’m afraid my experience has been the GPs need to not be their own bosses or doing any management and admin as if they were business owners.
I had what should have been a simple cancer diagnosis drawn out over 4 months because a GP just wanted to prescribe antibiotics on the basis of an econsult and photos. Then of course it turns more serious and a couple of months on urgent referral led to surgery another 6 weeks later. Then, with an infected surgery scar – when antibiotics were actually the answer – nothing. Not even an appointment. So it went until it was bad enough for A&E (borderline sepsis) and that’s everyone (except the GP) in a far worse position for fixing things and the capacity taken up than it should have been.
GPs are gatekeepers to the rest of the system but they don’t seem to always be doing the best job of it.
5 comments
The article gives two justifications for GPs refusing to switch back to face to face appointments:
1) Some patients are abusive
2) GPs have too many patients and many feel stressed
Neither of those change the fact that they’re drawing a salary for a job that they aren’t doing. You can’t just hide behind a phone because people are mean and you’re stressed, it’s meant to be a customer facing job.
Sob stories aside, if a GP is refusing f2f appointments that it their decision, so ultimately their fault.
It is actually assuming he’s the GP. He’s paid per person on his roles and he has committed to give them all appointments. If he can’t fit you in, he needs to be less of a greedy fuck and take less money and free it up for the next doctor.
Well, the way I see it, as GP clinics are businesses contracted to supply GP services to the NHS, so the buck stops with them if for what ever reason if they can’t for fill those obligations.
It might not be your actual doctors fault, but it is the fault of the organisation that they work for.
Doctors in the UK took 10-15 years to setup basic IT systems in their surgeries so people could make online appointments, that was a looming big red flag signaling its disarray. The contracts are all a complicated mess as well. Simply make all surgeries private, then let them claim money back from the government or let people rebate the cost of care like many other countries do. Money lost if you don’t turn up.
As someone who has twice had the same condition escalate until it cost the NHS and economy (and me) far more time and money to treat than it should have I’m afraid my experience has been the GPs need to not be their own bosses or doing any management and admin as if they were business owners.
I had what should have been a simple cancer diagnosis drawn out over 4 months because a GP just wanted to prescribe antibiotics on the basis of an econsult and photos. Then of course it turns more serious and a couple of months on urgent referral led to surgery another 6 weeks later. Then, with an infected surgery scar – when antibiotics were actually the answer – nothing. Not even an appointment. So it went until it was bad enough for A&E (borderline sepsis) and that’s everyone (except the GP) in a far worse position for fixing things and the capacity taken up than it should have been.
GPs are gatekeepers to the rest of the system but they don’t seem to always be doing the best job of it.