My gp surgery in London, has become so much a waste of time let me explain :
The 1st way you are worn down in seeking treatment for your ailments ? > delay in every treatment path.
Effectively you can only book an appointment 2-3 weeks in advance.
Almost pointless if whatever your ill with happens to be serious, you’d be dead by the time surgery got round to seeing you. This one could only be resolved by paying doctors less, perhsps half the 100,000 a year “basic” say 50,000 and having twice as many of them and allowing them conduct better quality services rather than the rushed 10 minute pointless appointments, tests never seem to be conducted on site at the time or anything barely passing for scientific medical practice is done, basically this what you will get is a 1920 blood pressure test, a cursory visual exam at arms length and a wave off to book another appointment 3 weeks later if things haven’t resolved themselves, meaning the whatever health issues you have are moved forward at either 3 week increment points of change, or if your really you lucky you might get a recommendation to book an appointment with a specialist, if things haven’t resolved themselves, if you are lucky you might get a prescription of some form of antibiotics that is completely ineffective against most lurgy’s that fly into London on the endless disease distribution system known as unchecked international travel. The resident immigrant population guaranteeing us every sneeze an illness, in the world finds its way here within 24 hours.
thy mystical same day appointments ?
If you ring at exactly 8am and wait or not wait on hold you may or may not get answered and you may or may not get one of the rare as hens teeth same day 10 minutes appointment, if by 8:05 your still on hold, this means you lost the lottery no one answered, and your call will not be answered but its impossible to tell what’s going on because they appear now to not answer the phone until after 9pm, if you don’t realise this its fully possible to be hanging on the phone for 50 minutes without realising they’re not answering calls despite the call holding message saying if you would like to hold someone will answer or you will be answered shortly which you will not, at 9am you may actually get through to the surgery, all the while the receptionist will claim no knowledge that you might have been held on their phone system for any such period it’s as though the flashing lights on their phone system mean nothing to them ? Because they steel themselves not to answer before 9am after having given out the few mystical same day appointments ? Or do they even exist ?
Gp receptionist. Seem also to have become inured to the job, whenever I enter the surgery the only people who seem to be catered are the foreign barely English speaking mums who seem to come for endless healthy baby inspections, I guess this part of the practice is the easy part as rarely anything ever goes wrong a healthy baby arrives time is spent on it, nothing difficult needs doing some simple generalised tests are given by the nurse … job done, easily adding to the positive record of events.
no continuity of patient care or developing relationship
You never seem to get the Same doctor twice as the doctors seem to be an endless parade of foreign doctors, there’s little chance as to whether your even getting a male or female doctor choice, and heaven forbid you get an out of hours or emergency doctor this maybe be any one of a random foreign Doctor whose just there for a day or two of obscene freelance income topping up, without about as much responsibility toward your health as a vague wind, after all there never there to be responsible for they’re input later ? There are and have several cases against camidoc my local area out of hours service for serious neglect in patient care cases where people have died due to lacklustre gp’s failing to identify the serious nature of patients condition, rarely do any of these cases ever come back to properly terminate a gp’s career. I have effectively given up trying to remember my doctors name because it will no doubt never be the same person twice, but I guess when you get paid 100k a year basic then you can stop going as soon as you have paid for an obscenely expensive house in London with all that overworked time, to no beneficial point for the patients healthcare outcome, its all just bonus money ?
the seemingly builtin redundancy of the current gp healthcare system
Effectively because gp’s seem little more than triage nurses with 1920’s symptomatic based generalised, in my experience, arms length, observational exam advice, who can only resort to theorising or recommending you on to someone who can actually conduct a useful test / do something or has specialist knowledge or powers to authorise tests or diagnose anything, the majority of the time they do spend, seems … mainly wasted, even if you get to a specialist theyre care can seem just as rushed, ie seeing as many patients as possible rather than actually getting a scientifically provable diagnosis for anyone ? The specialist circus can often seem just as rushed and broken and overloaded, I once had an appointment for a london dermatologist at a specific time, I turned up have to queue for an hour even though I arrived at the appointment time, behind seemingly the world and his wife, also without much scientific testing or proof I was given a diagnosis, In some ways gp’s will probably catch the limited treatment self inflicted diseases of the pre 1950’s, tug forlock doctor as respected unquestioned god and father figure era, type social ilnesses, if your lucky , high blood pressure / heart disease, smokers lung, and of course the easiest to diagnose obesity etc, gp surgeries seem to specialise in ongoing almost pointless advice related to lifestyle treatment, ie don’t smoke, don’t drink take exercise, eat less, no coffee / spicy foods, sugars eat regularly, get more regular sleep, try not to be stressed, live like a vegetarian monk in training etc. anyone already knows and can offer themselves this advice without needing to study to become a doctor as its common knowledge, and therefore flipping pointless advice ? Gp’s seem unable currently to operate any kind of useful scientifically accurate diagnosis / testing and care in situ in the surgery ?
But say your illness isn’t derived from bad lifestyle choices? lets say it’s something that needs determining and detecting otherwise your long term health is going to gradually decline unnoticed and unchecked then this I feel gp’s are pretty much useless for.
Feminine and child care bias It seems from my observation that surgeries in London are largely unwelcome to anyone, but most especially to anyone of the male sex. It seems to a large extent whenever I go in there (not that often) that there is an expectation on you not to turn up or be ill, the surgery staff seem mainly to consist of over stressed short tempered ageing women who long long ago lost any love or care for their job, or their associated temporary replacement trainee female foreigner who they seem to constantly mentoring and training to replace them someday by the afore most person, in a system of half broken archaic computer bureaucracy, whose main role seems to be as some kind of defensive wall that repels and diminishes almost to nought the patients expectation of care.
What with the strain on the system and its pointless routine of getting through the pure numbers of people regardless of care quality, the systems general response to the patient is to deter them from seeking further help and not aid them, in the will required for to further pursue health issue resolution, so as to naturally alleviate as much as possible its own pressures, but in this process it leaves Patient care and case movement seemingly totally dependant on the will and energy of the patient themselves to move there case forward. In this process only the aggressive strong willed or paranoid hypochondriac who seek help with avengeance for the slightest ailment, you know where every cold is fescribed as a flu every little cough a full on chest infection. the self posessed agressive personality and hypochondriac or over fretting mother must occupy 75% of all the sane capacity in the system. The people can win against a system that does no caring on your behalf toward your health without total pro activity on the patients part, and often there are those most in need who have no one else to fight there corner, a partner etc and whose health may have already combined with the dejecting nature of the system and their own impaired ability to represent themselves effectively health wise , those who are ill have the least energy to resolve their own Health issue’s etc or perhaps whose history of results, has made them conclude there is little point with engaging with such a poor and broken system.
The net result is an overloaded system, that does not serve the patient well, nor at least time wise doctors, regardless of their over the top financial remuneration, currently there is little healthcare value in relation to the vast sums, pumped into the gp system and doctors wages from public taxes.
Solution :
Train allot more graduate gp’s.
And let their pay fluctuate on the basis of patient satisfaction
somehow pay Gp’s not just on numbers of patients seen but on cases resolved to the patients satisfaction. Ie a gp whose see’s records number of patients is achieving very little unless they are resolving those healthcare issues or improving the healthcare outcome of the patient.
Health outcomes prp instead of patient numbers seen
Hardly any other profession is paid on any terms except results, and seeing more people on its own as a measurement is not a good measurement of effective work, especially as Gp’s seem to do little but filter people toward effective treatment elsewhere in the system rather than conduct any treatment or cure patients themselves, there effectively overpaid and expensive triage nurses. It seems to me a gp, that sees 48 patients a day, yet does not effectively drive or remain responsible for driving their health forward to the point of resolution is doing little, and seems sort of pointless, sadly the poor can only afford this style of treatment and any American system of private health care would leave them either in debt or without healthcare as quite clearly be seen by Americas example, Usa citizens who have to decide which finger they can afford to have stitched back on, whilst medical professionals seem even more obscenely overpaid and living in the lap of luxury.
In surgery testing
To change the ethos of gp’s from filtering patients via generalised blunt diagnosis design, and to stop subconsciously deferring the patient from seeking further help and in turn become pro-active on the patients behalf in seeking their health resolution, through in surgery based scientific testing, why is it that gp’s seem to send the “ill patient” on walkabout to the local hospital for blood tests for instance ? Why do gp’s seem incapable of even taking a simple blood sample for instance. ? And sending it off for testing on the patients behalf ? and lets not get down the road as to why a patient must bring their ill self to the surgery ? I remember when it was the other way round, where like a vet the doctor had his rounds and would house visit, those days of civility and progress are long past.
Surgerys need to be places of fast track scientifically based diagnosis.