Patients at Cambridge General practices (GPs) feel their phone call appointments have been a waste of time and unhelpful when compared to face-to-face appointments which could instead be conducted.
Sheree Anne from St Ives spoke about how she has been ill for over three months and that she has felt the GPs have been ‘mostly useless’ especially due to how her appointment was managed.
The initial wait time for a phone call is the first issue, although you do not need to go and see the doctor many patients are forced to sit in phone queues waiting for someone to answer.
This caused Sheree distress as she said: “You wait in a phone queue for 40 minutes to speak to a receptionist who tells you a doctor will phone you and then you wait all afternoon.”
It didn’t stop here unfortunately as she then felt that the phone call she received from the doctor wasn’t getting her the treatment she needed.
“I have at last had a scan and an x-ray after begging but still no answers and I have to wait a month to speak to a consultant about my scan.”
According to the standard operating procedure provided by the NHS they said: “All GP practices must ensure they are offering a blended approach of both face-to-face and remote appointments, so both are always available to patients according to what is clinically appropriate.”
Patients do have an input into this choice and can request for a face-to-face appointment unless the GP can give a good reason otherwise such as Covid-19 symptoms.
Karen Lambeth also had complaints about busy phones lines as well as being unable to receive an actual appointment as she said:
“You phone at 8.00am to get an appointment, phones that busy you can't get through, you phone back-to-back for 10 to 15 minutes so 8.15am at the latest to be told there are no appointments left, seeing as you can't pre book, this just doesn't feel right, plus now you hardly get a face-to-face.”
However according to a report provided by NHS digital face-to-face appointments have been increasing as of March 2021.
There have been almost 16 million face-to-face appointments conducted and just over 11 million Telephone appointments.
This is a 2 million increase from the month prior for both appointment types, however this does still mean a large portion of appointments are still phone calls which aren’t helping their patients.
A lot of these issues have been caused through trying to prevent or decrease the risks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and therefore organisations like the NHS have had to make changes to protect their staff and patients from this global issue.
Jo Hobson, the Senior Communications Manager at NHS Cambridgeshire, and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group said:
“In response to specific patient complaints, patients are asked to put complaints through to our Patient Experience Team so they can be dealt with accordingly.”