Let’s save face-to-face appointments for those who really need them
Ican’t be the only one to find GP phone appointments more efficient than face-to-face meetings. I appreciate that they are infuriating for those who really need to see a doctor, but most appointments do not need to happen in person.
It was always annoying before, when feeling ill, to drag oneself into the drab waiting room of the GP’S surgery and wait, listening to children cry and smokers cough, only to re-emerge an age later with a prescription for some obvious or recurring ailment. Now, I just make sure I have my phone on at the right time and within five minutes of the call, I have a blood test booked or a prescription waiting at a local chemist.
This should be a reminder that the UK is almost unique in its use of GPS to act as gatekeepers to the health service. In global comparisons, GPS rank as the least cost-efficient element of British healthcare, whereas our hospitals offer quite decent value for money.
A long-serving family doctor is a wonderful thing and, when there was less time pressure, the really good ones always offered more than a medical check-up. They were a confidante for patients with personal, mental health or family problems. But that isn’t what you get nowadays. During several years being registered at my local surgery, I don’t think I have ever met with the same doctor twice. Most of the time, an appointment is a fairly transactional event.
For those who really need proper, in-person consultations, they should be available. But if anything good can come from this tedious pandemic, perhaps it will help to update outdated practices still lurking in the system. First the NHS; next, the courts.
Here is the latest in my collection of Covid inconsistencies, following the strange case of social distancing in the gay sauna queue in Madrid mentioned last week. The tunnels at London’s South Kensington Tube station, which take visitors to the museums, have been closed. So is the Science Museum’s water play area for children. But its Wonderlab, in which visitors press buttons, roll balls into black holes and run their hands up and down slopes covered with mist from dry ice, is still open. So is this sort of touching and feeling a deadly threat or a harmless way to learn? Perhaps best not to ask, lest they shut down the Wonderlab too.