Post #4481608

2026-08-10 07:02 UTC

NHS healthcare in the UK be like: if you are late even by 40 seconds past 0800, you're gonna get bounced by the phone system. good luck! or if you actually need healthcare, go fuck yourself i guess

Replies (1)

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-08-10 07:32

@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems This varies a lot between GPs, you might have better luck elsewhere. It happened (as I understand it) because of some poorly thought out by well intentioned central rules about reserving some appointment slots for urgent things. This meant that there was an artificial limit to the number of appointment slots available in advance. The theory was that, if you needed an appointment on the day, you’d be able to call and get one. The problem is that so many slots are available only on the day that the in-advance ones fill up way in advance so the next one isn’t likely to be useful. So everyone who needs to be seen within a week or two ends up calling on the day. And so now they’ve got two weeks worth of appointment wanters calling each day. Most surgeries have one receptionist, who then has to take all of these calls at 8am. Some had a phone queueing system, others just required you to redial and try again to get through. And, generally, unless you were near the head of this queue, you’d not get an appointment. And they didn’t have a mechanism to say ‘all the slots for today are full, but we can fit you in tomorrow’ because the in-advance slots were all full. And, because they saw the one at a time, they had no real way of doing prioritisation. Some surgeries reduced receptionist load by putting their appointment thing online, so you had 30s to hit refresh at 8am if you wanted an appointment. Some have now started doing more sensible things like having a waiting list that lets them balance the advance and on-the-day appointment slots better. Of course, the prior funding slots that reduced the number of GP slots made them scarce whatever you did. And the fact that you need a GP referral for absolutely anything means that a lot of the slots are just a GP filling in some paperwork so that they can refer people elsewhere. My GP now tries to take a lot of those over the phone, at least, so you get a 5-minute call at some point when there’s a gap in the day.

Open ##4481607