THE PROBLEM
Trying to make an appointment to see a doctor has become a lottery. You are forced to call at specific times, unqualified staff often influence your next steps through a triage service and you might have to wait for a doctor to call you back before finally getting a proper appointment. There is no guarantee that you will even see the doctor within the timeframe of the illness and the inability to book non-urgent appointments means people often lie.

These GP services are paid for by us, the taxpayers, and the NHS charter clearly shows that we should be able to see a doctor within 48hrs, yet often it is impossible to even get through to the surgery at the specified time.

AN EXAMPLE

An ex-NHS key-worker is struggling with her 98 year old mother who is showing signs of dementia. A job lost because of the pandemic means that her daughter had to take a huge wage drop and the same lady therefore has to also look after her 2 year old granddaughter. 

At 8am, the designated time for trying to make an appointment at this particular surgery, with a 2-year old demanding all the things that a 2-year-old demands and a nearly-deaf 98-year-old shouting out orders and requests and both intermittently shouting and crying as they often do, between making breakfasts and getting people dressed and generally running a house, somehow she manages to make the call, for which she is 59th in the queue. But if she does eventually get through, the chances of getting her mother an appointment within 48hrs is small to non-existent, it is quite literally a lottery. But this particular case was for a non-urgent appointment to have her mother assessed, so the struggle continues because that still hasn’t happened.

but there are far more people in far worse situations than this. All over the country people are not seeing a doctor when they really should, because they just can’t spend hours waiting on the phone in the vain hope that they may be lucky this time.

THIS IS NOT HOW A HEALTH SERVICE SHOULD TREAT ANYONE, LET ALONE THE LIKES OF CARERS WHO ARE OFTEN STRUGGLING ALREADY.

THE PETITION

This petition is to get the system changed. Surgeries are penalised for not adhering to the ‘new’ rules, where you are not allowed to even have a registered GP or book a non-urgent appointment.

Technology is important, change is important, but people are more important and the system is not working for the people.

CHANGE THE SYSTEM TO ENSURE THAT EVERYONE HAS AMPLE OPPORTUNITY TO SEE THEIR DOCTOR WITH FLEXIBLE AND NON-URGENT APPOINTMENT BOOKING OPTIONS.