NHS whats happened?

[98elise]

M1AGM said:

Brainpox said:

M1AGM said:

My wife went to see the GP this morning, discussing a referral to the skin cancer clinic…..60 weeks for an appointment.

60 weeks.

Doesn't sound right, all suspected cancer referrals are sent under 2 week wait. Might be worth clarifying with the GP.

Is that the official line? Even if you believe that just think for one moment how that would be achievable with the massive waiting lists we now have and the lack of clinicians.

She was told that is the backlog and that is the wait. She asked ‘what if they look at the pictures and think its urgent/bad?’, GP shrugged. He said 60 weeks was the minimum wait, and that she could be waiting longer.

Sounds very odd.

My wife was treated for skin cancer towards the end of lockdown and she was diagnosed and treated in weeks. It was removed by surgery.

About a year ago I was also treated for skin cancer. Sent a picture for an e-consultation, got called in to see my GP, he believed it was cancer and it was dealt with about a week later in the same GP surgery.

A relative is currently being treated for breast cancer. Again the process has been very quick. No more than a couple of weeks between consultations, biopsy, MIR, and now surgery. All been quicker than the intial timescales given, which were perfectly reasonable to begin with.

[Teddy Lop]

And so it rumbles on.

Need to speak to the doc for two quite pressing things, one my deteriorating wrist that's been xrayd and blood tests, plus another thing he ordered I come back on after 2 weeks.

After several attempts with 1+hour holds, I get through to 111 and explain, lassie goes off and speaks to surgery, and comes back and tells me I need to call them a 8am

I explain the futility of this, she says there's nothing more she can do and a senior clinition will call me. This happens, I explain, senior clinition goes off, speaks to surgery, calls me back and says they're instructing me to call at 8am. I explain the futility of this, they go off and overide the system to make the appointment for the doc to call me. How many phonecalls and points of contact and resources are being wasted in gatekeeping the service?

Get a referral for physio on the wrist; fill out all their online nonsense and get an email back telling me I've been triaged and I have to call them in a month, and if i dont they'll assume I don't need it and close the case. Basically hoping I'll miss the deadline one presumes.

[Biker 1]

Jesus, is this really the state of play??
I haven't been to my GP surgery since 2005 - luckily I have a very good osteopath mate & I have reasonably good first aid training, but I shudder to think what will happen if the st hits the fan!

[M1AGM]

Millions wait more than a fortnight to see a GP in England

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-65275367

[WyrleyD]

I miraculously got a referral in February to the local ENT hospital, after a week or so I get a letter supposedly from the hospital to tell me I'd been referred stating that I should ring the ENT appointments if I haven't heard by April 7th. That date comes and goes so on April 17th I rang the appointments line and said that I should have heard something by April 7th, the reply I received was that those letters are sent by somewhere central in the NHS and not the local hospital, further she said that they would not have contacted me and instead would wait for me to contact them! That is not what it says in the letter, the letter is wrong she reckoned. Anyway, she said that I could have an appointment on April 28th, no good I said as I'm going away tomorrow and won't be back until mid-May, well she said you'll just have to wait until you come back and call again as they're not allowed to offer appointment dates more than 3 weeks ahead!!

Dis-functional service, I'd say so.