Gosh

[lovingboth]

People are just tackling Tony Blair on the issue of GPs only giving appointments 48 hours in advance.

Clearly the one we were trying to get an appointment at for someone a few weeks ago is not the only one doing this...

Comments

[mattp.livejournal.com]

What surprised me more than it actually happening (I already knew it was, but anyway...) was that it was news to him. Surely as a politician he'd have learned that some organisations take guidlines as mandate.

[a-musing-amazon.livejournal.com]

Its not a question of guidelines being taken as mandate, it a question of how do you, as a GP practice, ensure that there are enough slots so that you can guarantee that anyone who rings can get to see their GP within 48 hours. You maximise the chances of that by not allowing anyone to book more than 48 hours in advance.

Our GP practice does allow very limited booking ahead, but if you want to do it that way then you are probably talking more than just a week. As a commuter the only strategy that really works for me is to go to the surgery before 8 am in the morning (the doors open around 8:30), in which case I will usually get seen before 9:30 :-(.

I agree that you would expect Tony Blair to realise that this is the result one might expect from the sort of unreflective targeting the goverment uses (mostly I suspect without asking for or taking their civil servants advice first). But then there are lots of other things that seem pretty obvious to most of us that he just doesn't get (Public Private Partnerships, International Law, the futility of ID cards, etc., etc.).