GP services have been declining for years
I READ with wry interest the article headlined “GP surgery sorry over its ‘rude and accusatory’ sign” (Leicester Mercury, November 29) about the notice exhibited at Westcotes GP surgery.
Whilst I am not a patient there, my own experiences and that of other correspondents to your letters page indicate that GP services are reaping what they have been sowing for many years.
The service from GP practices has been deteriorating for a long while and it is clear the Covid pandemic has provided the smokescreen for a near-total move to non-face-to-face patient consultation – if you can get in the morning queue early enough to get one of those.
Long gone are the days when patients too ill to visit the surgery received home visits.
As for telephone consultations, they predate the pandemic by several years, despite the dangers of misdiagnosis.
Over five years ago, I had such a consultation relating to a problem with my foot which was wrongly diagnosed over the phone as gout. I have no doubt that much worse cases of misdiagnosis and probably even deaths have occurred as a result of such consultations.
As for delays, in 2019 I had to wait over two weeks for a telephone consultation and only got that as a result of an argument with the receptionist.
And it isn’t just the response to illness that is affected. When in 2019 I tried to get inoculations which were due – by the practice’s own timetable – I was told I would have to book more than three months in advance and when refusing to accept that was told that they “didn’t have to do them anyway”, despite the contract they had with the NHS.
When listening to the bleating of GPs we should remember that these practices are privately-owned businesses and contracted by the NHS with our money to provide an acceptable level of service, which clearly, they are failing to do.
It is therefore not surprising that patients, frustrated at not being able to see a doctor, in person or even, in many instances, remotely, are having to assert themselves to receptionists, many of whom present themselves as triage personnel, or to practice managers who should be there to improve the service and facilitate patient needs but all too often have become a barrier to such.
All too often today, the only way to see a doctor face to face is to visit A&E and there can be no doubt the deterioration in GP services has added immensely to the pressures on the directly employed NHS.
The practice notice presented by the organisation in your article attempts to include indirect practice personnel as defence against patient frustrations. However, I fail to see how cleaners and such, who are undoubtedly paid the minimum the practice can get away with, are responsible in any way for the lack of service the practice provides.
One aspect of the GP service that has not deteriorated over the years is the commitment to the remuneration of the practice partners, the owners of the business. In my own practice’s case, last year the practice partner income exceeded £128,000 each.
I would suggest the best chance anyone has of getting an appointment would be to explain to the receptionist that you wish to meet a doctor to advise on how best they might invest their earnings.
Mike Pilbeam, Leicester