GP Hours

In the news yesterday, there was a lot of talk about the Prime Minister’s speech suggesting that GP hours should be expanded to 8am-8pm and operating seven days a week.

Personally, I think this is a good idea – or at least some semblance of it. I don’t necessarily think they need to be open seven days a week – although, thinking about it, how long can it be ’til Tesco et al start having GP surgeries within their supermarkets?  But simply being open for longer/better hours, and (ideally) on a Saturday would make a massive difference to most people, I suspect.

Currently, my own GP is open 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday. That’s only useful if

1. You’re unemployed, or based at home (whether home-working or raising a family)
2. You work in the same location

For me – and for most working inhabitants of the village – using that GP means taking time off work for a simple GP visit. That’s unacceptable. If I were on medication (like when I was on anti-depressants a few years back) then I’d have to take time off every so often for a re-checkup.  Fortunately, I was with a different GP at the time – the one in Norfolk ended up doing longer days (7am to 8pm I think) which made things a lot easier. (Of course, having made a pain in the arse of myself with the practice manager also helped, and meant that things got sorted a lot quicker anyway)

Basically, it doesn’t (in my opinion) need to go from one extreme to the other – but simply recognising the needs of the community that deal with each GP would make life one hell of a lot easier all round. Simply opening six days a week instead of five, and/or longer hours would be enough.

Of course, the other major difference/improvement would be to hire good receptionists who make appointments, rather than trying to find out what you’ve got for no good reason. It’d also be beneficial to have decent systems/methods in place that don’t mean the only free appointments are taken by 9.05 on any given day, and appointments for non-urgent enquiries can be made more than a week in advance…

But hey, what would I know?