"Appointment Lottery"

Having been here now for almost 5 years I can say very little has improved. If you win the appointment lottery then great. But as of today you still must use the dreaded econsult to get an appointment. Depending on the demand you may only get a small window to do so. Today for example you have to submit your econsult between 0730-0830. That is it. A one hour window and if you miss it or are unavailable then no health care for you. Don’t bother phoning up. They’ll just tell you to try again tomorrow or call 111 if it is urgent. Spend several hours negotiating 111 and you’ll just get referred back to your GP. Now if you can manage to find the time during the very specific one hour window to submit your econsult you then have to wait for the lottery if a call back. Don’t you dare miss that call. They ring once for about 10 seconds and if you don’t answer that is it. Start the process again waiting for the next one hour window. If you are at work during that window or otherwise unable to meet it then tough. The practice could not care less if they even tried to. I’m done with this practice. A simple change to the system such as being able to submit an econsult anytime would make a massive difference. I understand if I miss the deadline for the day it won’t be looked at until the next day but why is it that you can only submit it during that specific hour? And as for call backs, surely trying more than once is common courtesy. I can’t be the only patient at your surgery with a job that makes taking phone calls difficult. Can you not even give a window of when to expect the call? I was lucky once in my five years to win the appointment lottery. I sent in my econsult having used half a day of annual leave since my employer doesn’t do less than half a day, and managed to grab my phone as it rang two days later just in time right at the end of my lunch break. The phone call was rushed but I got invited to a face to face appointment and everything from there on was fantastic. But winning the appointment lottery is so difficult that I’m done with this practice. One appointment in five years is not an acceptable level of service to offer to patients. Even if it means I have to travel further for my appointments I’d much rather actually have an outside chance of getting an appointment in the first place.