Overheard in the Waiting Room, I can never get an appointment!

Evening all,

Time for another post in our series of 'Overheard in the Waiting Room'. Another grumble we overhear on a regular basis. One we unfortunately do not have an appropriate solution for, although we would love to have one. I feel that a lot of the dissatisfaction with the appointment system stems from a misunderstanding in how our appointment system works. I do not believe there is any 'perfect' appointment system and if you believe otherwise or have any suggestions to what a perfect appointment system would be, we are always open to suggestions. No promises that we will take them up, but we will certainly look at your suggestions and take them into consideration.

So, how does our appointment system work?

There are a few different appointments on our computer system.

• Prebookable appointments. These can be booked into up to 2 weeks in advance. However, there are only 5 of these appointments available per doctor per session. These obviously get allocated quite quickly.
• Book on the day appointments. These are only available for booking on the same day as the appointment and are the remaining appointments in the sessions for the doctors.
• Clinic appointments, these get allocated as appropriate for that particular clinic, some are only prebookable.
• Telephone appointments. These appointments are only available for the Duty Doctor of the day and only are available on the day and for 'emergencies'. This means that if no appointments are available and you deem your problem to be urgent for that day your details will be taken by the receptionist and passed on to the Duty Doctor of the day. The doctor will then assess and triage the problem and ensure that the problem is dealt with as appropriate. This can be done by phoning you back, passing on a message or advice via our receptionists, offer an appointment or in any other way which is felt to be appropriate for your problem.

In other words, if no appointment is available to prebook at a time that seems acceptable to you, there are some other options open to you.

1. You could make a prebookable appointment, but still try to get an earlier appointment by ringing to check for any available 'Book on the Day' appointments. If an earlier appointment became available, you would then cancel the prebooked apppointment.
2. If you feel your problem is too urgent to wait for a prebookable appointment or a Book on the Day appointment on a later day, you could request for a 'Ring Back' or telephone consultation with a doctor.

Alternatively you could also book an appointment with our nurse in Minor Illness Clinic, see a pharmacist in their Minor Illness Clinic or attend the 8-8 centre in town.

Remember the A+E department is only for Accidents and Emergencies, they do not deal with any ongoing problems or problems that could be dealt with by your GP. Except for that, the waiting times at A+E are often quite substantial as well (partially due to inappropriate attendances we are told) and speaking to your GP practice could potentially give you a faster response. Did you realise that a lot of patients attending casualty, do not stay to wait to be seen due to the waiting times, but the NHS still gets charged for this as though these patients were actually seen? I believe this is currently being looked into, but if we all work together, we could avoid unnecessary attendances, waiting times and expenses by only attending A+E when this is appropriate.

If you are uncertain about whether it is appropriate for you to attend casualty, you could always contact your GP, Out of Hours service or the new NHS 111 service for advice on this.

I hope this helps to clarify things a little better with regards to our appointment system. Unfortunately we will never be able to make it work for everyone. If anyone has any great ideas on how it can be improved, I'm always happy to listen to your ideas.