Sundays are free all day.
In the surgeries first year of operation the Department of Health funded UK GP Survey results for 2009-10 showed that 95% of registered patients where satisfied at the overall quality of care received, ranking the surgery at 18th out of 92. However, patient satisfaction deteriorated significantly during the subsequent 12 months (2010-11) to rank the GP surgery at just 66th out of 92,(see table at end of article). The latest GP Survey results will be analysed and published shortly, which this review is in advance of as a summary of what patients can expect based on real experience of using the GP Surgery services as a registered patient for 6 months from mid 2011 onwards over a number of consultations as covered in greater detail in November 2011.
Expect to be kept waiting for upto 1 hour 20 minutes for a pre-booked GP Consultation appointment (way too long).
Despite the glossy leaflets and website, No new patient health check, even if an appointment specifically for a health check is booked in person at reception then still the patient is likely to receive just an ordinary GP Consultation on their next visit.
Quality of consultations is poor because the Surgery as personally experienced as a matter of routine dumps patients onto locum's (temporary GP's), as experienced in 2 out of 3 consultations. The flaw here is that these consultations can prove worthless, and have resulted in the locum stating that they are unable to deal with the patient symptoms and that they need to go and make another appointment with a regular GP, which the patient had already done so in the first place thus resulting in a wasted day and in having to wait for another week and associated 66% probability of being seen by another locum despite requesting to have an appointment with a regular GP.
This highlights the danger of letting the private sector contract for the NHS as without competition for patients between GP Surgeries then there is no incentive to deliver satisfactory GP or any other health services as monopolies will seek to maximise profits such as by cutting costs by contracting locum's.
Patients should aim to register with GP practices that rank in the top 1/3rd of GP surgeries as per the UK GP Patient Survey so as to increase the probability of being in receipt of satisfactory GP services. However the flaw here is that GP practices operate as local monopolies that do not allow patients to register from outside of catchment areas, which means you will likely have to move house to register with a 'good' GP surgery, hence an example of the NHS post code lottery.
An alternative is to pay for private GP consultations and referral which could prove costly (especially the referral and resulting treatment) which would mean that patients are effectively being FORCED TO PAY TWICE FOR HEALHCARE. Also private medical insurance can turn out to be worthless in many cases given the multitude of small print get out clauses observed.
In terms of the big picture, the One Medicare experience highlights the problem at the root of the NHS that the governments reforms of letting private sector firms to take up GP practice delivery is the lack of a market for patients, and not for services. For if there is no real competition between surgeries for patients then the patient will NOT come first, no matter who is delivering the service.
A very interesting commentry on what we are told should be the way forward, according to numerous Government politicians.
Your comments add weight to the recent 'Keep our NHS public' campaign by all the professional NHS bodies.
I will pass your commentry on to my colleagues in the retirement association I belong to (CSPA) as it is current to the joint campaigns being run by the National Pensioner Convention.
Fortunately I live in an area with a charmingly old fashioned practice of doctors who know you as an individual, surely vital to ones health?
The real problem is lack of competition for patients.