(no subject)

[simont]

Dark mutterings toward my doctor's surgery, which has apparently changed its appointment policy. You now can't pre-book an appointment by more than a day or two, and there are very few pre-bookable ones even then. You have to ring up on the day and get an appointment, which means you have pretty much no chance of getting one at a time of day that's convenient to you.

Previously you could pre-book by a week or so, which was great for non-urgent appointments because you could generally arrange a useful time of day, and there were also some emergency slots for booking on the same day if it was urgent. This seemed to work very well for me, although presumably it was somehow less good from the surgery's point of view or they wouldn't have changed it.

I rang up recently and said ‘Hello, I'd like to make an appointment to see a doctor’. My old GP had left Cambridge, so I had no particular preference out of the available doctors; it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to give the surgery the maximum possible latitude to set up whatever was convenient for them. So the above was all I said: I simply wanted to see a doctor. Whichever doctor was convenient, at whatever time was convenient. And at this simple request, the receptionist went all doubtful and said ‘Ooh, er, I'm not sure we can do that’.

I boggle. If you can't do that, why are you even answering the telephone at all?

Comments

[karen2205]

I was very impressed with mine - I phoned to book an appointment in two weeks time, and said either as early in the morning as possible or as late in the afternoon as possible and they gave me an 8am appointment which is great!

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Lots of surgeries have switched to arranging appointments like this. It seems that some people don’t remember to turn up for their appointment if it’s more than a couple of days away.

[rmc28]

Bridge St went to doing this a while ago. While it winds up my diary-driven organisational side not to be able to book something routine well in advance, in practice ringing up in the morning does usually get me an appointment at a time I can cope with.

There are some exceptions: the phlobotomy nurse has specific days and for some reason IUS fittings are routinely only done on one afternoon a week (perhaps because you need both doctor and nurse for that).

There's probably an NHS target for reducing missed appointments driving all this.

[chess]

ISTR the excuse I heard was that all the students kept not showing up for their appointments, and they were less likely to forget within a day...

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's an infuriating practise - designed to minimise the number of missed appointments apparently. Most surgeries allow advance booking of about 30% of appointments, though.

General reply to the "It's because people keep missing appointments" comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I wonder if walking into the surgery with diary and pen in hand would have any effect?

[simont]

Nice idea :-) But unfortunately, in my case, walking into the surgery is a lot of hassle just to make the appointment. It's bad enough that I have to go there when it's time to actually see the doctor! We need more telepresence-type technology. Um. Or something...

[deborah_c]

the receptionist went all doubtful and said ‘Ooh, er, I'm not sure we can do that’.

"Can't do that" probably translates to "we have a fancy computer system which will only show me the timetable for one doctor at a time, and I don't want to bother looking up each doctor in turn to see what's available". As always, the application of technology doesn't always improve life...