The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- John Furner
Brits are still struggling to get face-to-face GP appointments — despite multiple ministers promising to fix the situation.
Furious campaigners claim patients are being trapped in a ‘Catch 22’ system that bounces them between phone queues and online forms.
And when they do eventually get through, many complain they are still unable to secure an appointment in-person.
One GP practice is still partly blaming Covid for the overall mayhem.
This map shows the 50 GP practices with the lowest proportion of face-to-face appointments according to official NHS data.
Patients at Montgomery House Surgery have complained about being trapped between phone queues and online forms while trying to get an appointment, all the while being thanked for their ‘patience’ during the Covid crisis by outdated automated messages
An automated message at the surgery in Oxfordshire thanked patients stuck in a phone queue for their ‘patience’ during the pandemic.
This is despite it being almost a year since all the final pandemic restrictions were lifted.
Since then, several health secretaries have demanded that family doctors — who earn £110,000 on average — return to normal operations.
Latest NHS figures on GP appointments show 69 per cent of all appointments were held face-to-face in November.
This was down slightly on the figure for October (71.3 per cent), which marked the highest proportion since the start of Covid.
In-person consultations nosedived during the pandemic, with the rate dropping as low as four in 10 during the early days of the virus crisis as Brits were told to stay at home to limit the spread of the virus.
