Yes it is true your local GP surgery is privately owned, run as a business and funded by the NHS.
My Local GP surgery was almost empty and it is next-to impossible to get an appointment, while my local hospital was packed and had a 6 hour wait. What on earth is going on with our NHS system in the UK?
Watch this shocking footage and read the full story below.
The fact is that for many many years, most local GP surgeries are privately owned by one or a group of doctors who run the practice as a private business (some are Limited Companies). They receive millions of pounds from the NHS by using their booking systems, using recommended companies that send out texts for them, extra pay for video appointments, meeting quota’s set out by the NHS etc £, etc £, etc £.
My experience of getting an appointment at my local GP Surgery
Getting an appointment at my local GP Surgery is almost impossible. They have the “triage system” and then the further interrogation by the “person” who eventually picks up the phone. Even then you may not get called back or qualify for an appointment in person. Impressively after jumping through hoops, I got one of those almost extinct things called an appointment at my local GP surgery. Yahoo!
On Tuesday the 7th of December 2022 at 1650 hours, I turned up for my meeting with a real live doctor at my local GP Surgery. I hadn’t qualified for this rare event in so many years, I did not realise you now check in on a computer. I look confused as to how to register but three, yes 3 staff from behind the check in desk, told me to use the computer. I was baffled as to the purpose of such a devise with so many staff and so few patients. Yes, so few patients. There were two patients sitting waiting, three members of staff behind the desk and two doctors listed on the board. I will let you do the maths on those ratios. After an hour of waiting, I eventually saw the doctor but at this point, the surgery was empty of patients but still full of staff yet they don’t close until 1830.
The Following Day I Visited my Local Hospital
On Wednesday the 8th of December 2022, at approximately 1400 hours, I turned up to my local NHS Hospital. It was packed in the car park and A&E was heaving inhumanly with a suggested 6 hour wait. I was greeted by this sign. You have to read it to believe it. The sign included a suggestion to “PLEASE SEE YOUR GP”. Note even the date was incorrect. A lady had just finished writing on the board and it appears to say a waiting time of 74 hours.
I didn’t stay as others screaming in pain seemed far needier than my ailments. From young to old on a Wednesday afternoon, it was unbelievable.
Why is it so difficult to book an appointment at my local GP Surgery? It’s virtually empty, privately owned, funded mostly by the NHS yet our NHS Hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed and inhumane? We are all having to use our hospitals because we cannot get into our local privately owned GP Surgeries. WHY?
I urge people to look at their local GP surgeries and hospitals. Write something about it and add it on my comments section. Maybe we can get enough support, so our local private GP surgery actually starts to work properly. After all, we are paying GP’s surgeries through our taxes so they can make money for themselves and they are providing very little healthcare services. We just want our healthcare organised to be good, not third world and for ‘our taxes’ to be spent on ‘our actual healthcare’.
Please write comments, all are read.
Thank you
Soozi’s Grown Up Life 