Whomever is to blame, the patient isn’t concerned with whom, all they know is the GP system is often failing for them as a system, out of the 5 visits I’ve made to a GP in last 15 years, I would not consider I got £1600 worth of treatment ? 100k a year on average seems excessive. The field of medicine imo relative to the issues that people have, is till in its infancy regardless of the all knowing 1950’s parent aura that some Gp’s seem to exude. The box of cures rattles half empty it seems, except for elements of physical surgery, The box of treatments is stuffed with chemical imbalancing, side effect causing, mediocre treatments that sometimes successfully alleviate symptoms, but often leave the patient worse off in the long run. The 1920’s colonial from 12 feet viewed, style of symptomatic visual diagnosis is completely out of date, I’d rather have as much scientific testing / screening done as possible by a machine, and leave the rest that cant be done by a machine or is of immediate urgency done by doctors, its not good a doctor seeing the quantity of people they try to get through in a day, if he wants push those cases to some useful form of health resolution for each individual patient. Id rather a system in which surgery’s/GP’s were paid for treatments, consultations, and outcomes, the current whether government engineered or gp engineered system, seems to lead to a situation in which gp’s profits are created by deferring people from visits or treatment, as they make a greater profit from the total they are given if they spend less themselves on the patient, GP’s should be paid on a time / healthcare outcome basis, especially since the falsely perceived vocational element seems to have gone completely or lost all of its respect, I think that respect for gp’s has died with the complete cultural fragmentation of our culture down to the bedrock of monetary divide, this situation only wasn’t so … for a brief period of time post the formation of the NHS, in its heyday 1948-1976. If healthcare were private completely in the UK, it would be a form of healthcare ransom shakedown / robbery as it is in America, whereby people who work in healthcare even in relatively basic posts are excessively wealthy compared to to other people around them in culture, which leads as always to further divide and erosion of trust, and leads to the standard situation found globally, which is also true in Britain but not as excessively so. If your poor, you die earlier, and you will often lead a less constitutionally sound life, for those years in which you are on a doctors books.

If like me you live in urban poor outer london, this will be the scenario: the appointment delay is 2-3 weeks in being seen, you will get 15 minutes of someones time who is being paid 100k a year, who will make short shrift of you and your ailments and persuade you in general to take a form of painkillers or antibiotics if your lucky and say come back in 2 weeks, or if your really lucky put you forward to a specialist who is equally overloaded, the only time a gp will push your case forward is when he’s reminded of your case when staring at the computer screen in that 15 minutes you might be able to book once every 2 weeks, other than that your healthcare is your own affair, The system mainly revolves around waiting for something to break major style, heart attack etc and going to A&E to get something done about it, rather than preventative care to catch complex subtle illnesses that go on to kill later, The GP profession in my poor area seems mainly loaded with foreign asian doctors whom turn over more frequently than my visits, or locums. and sadly reception staff who have lost any sense of care due to them at them being at a frontline of a system that seems perpetually under collapse, I’m sure as always its mainly the sharp operator Gp’s who benefit the most from the system, by placing their own financial comfort first, rather than their patients. The NHS should employ NHS only Gp’s recruited directly and pay them on the basis of hours and outcomes, and make sure they employ a range of native people, who understand its a vocation, but at the same time do not exude any ego, and are completely honest and clear about the failings of medicine currently, and where it has domain over ailments and where its understanding is currently sparsely informed and lacking, because allot of the time a patient gets a diagnosis that has little or no cure and limited treatment, arriving at this point is no doubt a written down in reports as successful resolution and diagnosis of an issue, but doctors should start to be very clear with patients that naming and recognise some ailment doesn’t mean doctors understand anything useful about it, and is only the beginning of the journey of medicine.

The prescription systems needs complete overhaul the idea that to renew a prescription in this day and age, one has to hand a scrip form in at the surgery and then wait 2 working days (meaning over bank holiday weekends (5 days?), illness doesn’t take a break on “non work days” and then return to the surgery to pick up the scrip then go to the chemists to pick it up, is archaic ? If amazon can like clockwork, deliver a vitamin to my door once a month on time, then why not the NHS ? this to me seems like a lack as usual with the NHS of getting with the technological times and putting in place the infrastructure to make things happen ? Amazon could certainly do the delivery to peoples door better than the NHS will ever manage.