"A practice that has been chsnged beyond..."

I have been a patient of this practice for many years. Since in fact, we all used to have a named doctor who, if we were unfortunate to suffer bad health, we had a personal relationship. As with most GP practices, the drive to provide services more efficiently and the drive to provide more services for more people has not led to a better patient experience but a worse and more impersonal one. Despite rules saying we should have a named doctor, the doctor you end up with wil be "off the pile" and will not know you from Adam or be familiar with your history. Don't get me wrong. Many of the available doctors are excellent GPs but they are no longer your doctor or necessarily the one you saw last tome for an ongoing complaint. Getting an appointment can, as in many practices, take a long time paricularly if you have a preference or want to see the same doctor for an ongoing complaint. Telephoning the practice basically involves listening to a machine for a long time. Today, I spent a long time listening to information and music just to be cut off twice. All I wanted to know is whether test results had been returned and in the end I had to go to the surgery to be told, "No". They are required by contract to provide things like test results and more on line these days but for some reason, this practice does not do so. Ironic really as doing so may save them work and reduce appointment requests. But there you are! I have e-mailed the practice to find out why test result and complete medical notes are not available on line. After all its our personal data, all of it. So far though, I have had no reply. It's just a big machine this practice now. If you want some human treatment, the unfortunate thing is that there is perhaps no where to go to get it. Just part of the NHS system that has been driven into a turn of the handle machine. Perhaps they should just close all these practices and go the whole hog by replacing them entirely with drop in centres.