Still hanging on... waiting for your local surgery to answer the phone

THERE cannot be many people who won’t recognise the scenario. You telephone at 8am as instructed, but the number is engaged. You ring off and try again … and again … and again. Eventually, you get through, but it is a recorded announcement telling you that you are in a queue. When it is finally your turn, you’re out of luck. You haven’t won the lottery. Once again, the prize of a conversation with your GP has eluded you.

Still, you can always try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. But, as frustrated as you might be, you don’t complain because the last person you want to upset is a doctor’s receptionist.

Instead, you think wistfully of that golden era when you simply turned up at the surgery and waited your turn, knowing that, even if it meant a twohour wait, you would see your doctor that day.

Why is it so difficult to see your GP in 2021? Well, Covid-19 is obviously to blame. But wait, in 2018, a full year before most of us had ever heard of a place called Wuhan, the Royal College of General Practitioners estimated that by 2022 there would be more than 100 million incidents of a patient waiting a week or more to see a GP or practice nurse. This was blamed on the fact that, because there was a rising number of cases of people having two or more long-term conditions, more and more wanted to see their doctor.

But the difficulty of getting to see your GP has been a storm gathering for years. In 2015, a survey of over 1,000 GPs found that 82% intended to reduce direct clinical work over the next five years. Friends living as far apart as Wales and the north of England tell me that there is now only one full-time GP at their surgery. The receptionist at one GP practice in Derby said that it is overwhelmed because doctors and nurses are off sick, suffering from stress. One friend rang a surgery in the city on behalf of a relative, to be told that his call was 65th in a queue.

Another said: “The earliest appointment I can get is December. I want to complain but my wife fears a backlash if I do.”

Indeed, none of the above, nor any others with similar complaints, wished to be identified for fear of being branded a troublemaker. In the meantime, the frustration and worry – not to mention the inconvenience of hanging on the phone from 8am, day after day – continues. NHS staff are a universally wonderful and dedicated group of people. But, at the first point of contact, the system itself is failing.

Last week, I asked the NHS Derby and Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group that “brings together the combined expertise of 112 local GP practices … to commission health services on behalf of over 1,065,000 patients in Derbyshire” if it would comment on the difficulty of getting a GP appointment. I was told: “You will receive a response in due course.” At the time of writing, I’m still hanging on …