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Terrible system for booking appointments

Story from nhs.uk

"Terrible system for booking appointments"

About: Wooda Surgery

The way in which you now need to make an appointment is terrible, more so for people who work full time. Many people work full or long hours, so getting an appointment is virtually impossible. Have phoned recently to make an appointment for a family member to be told that they would need to phone the surgery, then wait for a call back to discuss medical issue, for the doctor to then decide if you then need to come in. I now have a medical problem but firstly finding it difficult to ring the surgery as at work during open hours. I work in an office so am embarrassed to discuss my issue in front of my colleagues, plus my medical issues should be confidential between me and my doctor, and unfortunately mobile reception is poor so have to be at a desk to talk to the doctor. My employer pays me to do a job and not sit and wait for a doctor to call me back and then have a discussion about medical issues. Not all work places have a private area where you can speak to a doctor in confidence. Another issue being my doctor only works part time, so if I do need to see or speak to him/her it is again really difficult, having been told if you don't ring in early enough you won't get a face to face appointment. The new system may be more effective for the surgery, but it has made it virtually impossible for many patients to be able to see a doctor. Have been with this surgery for nearly 20 years and this is the worst system that has been introduced. It would be interesting to get the surgery to employ an independent research company to find out how patients really feel about this new appointment system and what the impacts are, whether good or bad.

Even though this is a complaint about the appointment system, I would like to add that in all the years I have been a patient here, I have always found the staff to be professional, and polite, so this is not a reflection on any person who works here.

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Responses

Response from Wooda Surgery 6 years ago
Wooda Surgery

Submitted on 21/11/2017 at 14:29
Published on nhs.uk at 16:31

Thank you for your feedback about the change in our system. Prior to January 2017, our wait for face to face appointments had rocketed to an average of around 4-6 weeks. This meant that patients with potentially serious problems were waiting an unacceptably long time to see a doctor. As the doctors were all fully booked weeks in advance, there was no flexibility to fit in patients in a safer timeframe. Demand on appointments nationally is rising 10% every year, and patient lists are rising with the increasing local population. NHS England funding has not risen to meet this demand.

An independent body was brought in to review our appointments system, assess the level of demand on appointments and present us with options to meet this demand better.

The result of this was the new telephone triage system. This means that all doctors now have availability on the same day. We are able to offer more appointments than we previously did this way, as simpler issues can be resolved over the telephone. More complex problems are then brought in at a mutually agreed time for face-to-face assessment. Doctors often fill up quickly, so if your doctor is full and the problem needs to be dealt with the same day, we take turns to act as the emergency doctor for the day. Our emergency doctor has no ‘cap’ so you will ALWAYS be offered urgent care if you clinically require it.

We know it can be hard to take calls if you are working, driving, etc. Please let our reception team know if there are times when it is impossible for you to pick up your phone. Employers are obliged to let you seek medical attention, just as they had to release you for face-to-face appointments using our old system.

We have now been using this system for nearly a year, and have had the opportunity to study the impact on patient care. We found the following:

• A 21% drop in our patients attending Accident and Emergency departments

• A 33% drop in the waiting time between initial contact with our surgery and first appointment in specialist care for our cancer patients

• 80% continuity of care (seeing the same GP every time) for patients with mental health issues

• An average wait for a routine telephone appointment with your usual doctor of 1.6 days (the range in this study was 0 to 6 days) (The wait for an emergency appointment is always 0 days as we do not have a cap on our emergency duty system, unlike many surgeries)

• An 80% reduction in waiting times for face-to-face appointments, as we can now book double appointments for patients with complex or multiple problems

• A rise of 2818 more appointments offered over the corresponding 6 month period in the previous year

• Consistent performance above the national average in EVERY element of the independently conducted national GP Patient Survey (please see https://gp-patient.co.uk/)

• Management of multiple uncomplicated conditions was consistently adherent to Public Health England guidelines and completed in less time over the telephone than in a face-to-face appointment

Although we are proud of what has been achieved, we know this is not a perfect system and we value suggestions on how we can make it better for our patients. We run a Patient Participation Group to allow patients to meet together in the presence of our practice manager and one of our GP partners to support us in adapting our systems to meet the ever-increasing needs of our patient population.

Please contact the practice manager at Wooda if you are interested in joining, on 01237 471071.

Thank you for your time in reading this information.

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