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Britain, 2025. There is an online booking system for everything. A Japanese restaurant in town, a child’s soft play, even car parks. It is to point of ludicrousness, yet in one area where such efficiency is desperately required — there is a complete dearth.
A postcode lottery awaits patients who wish to make a seamless appointment with their GP, however many are faced with the dreaded “8am rush”.
Booking an appointment with your GP is a process that should be should be simple. In reality? Many patients struggle with long phone queues, limited availability, and unclear processes. The 8am rush has become synonymous with a dysfunctional NHS — taxpayers will rightly ask, we’re all being asked to pay more and more, how has such an obvious problem not been solved?
It isn’t just inconvenient and awkward, it can be lethal. A young mother who has discovered a small lump in her breast or has coughed up some blood finally plucks up the courage to ring her GP. It’s the morning, the children are being difficult, lunchboxes need to be prepared, the school run is approaching. She picks up the phone to speak to a GP, and she’s met with a queue. One minute goes by, then two and five. The mum can’t wait any longer, she hangs up and the problem is pushed to the back of her mind. What then happens?
Conditions can develop quickly, and they do.
We all live busy lives. It is selfish and ridiculous to expect men and women to put aside an unknown amount of time at such an awkward time of the day just in the hope to speak to their doctor.
These systems are so simple — much of the existing software in surgeries will generally provide that functionality already, if it’s deployed in the correct way. If a soft play can manage it, so can a GP surgery.
Naturally, there will be issues to resolve such as marking certain problematic patients or ensuring that the phone line remains open with a certain allocation of slots to ensure fairness for all.
Reception teams could quickly assess whether their booking is appropriate before confirming the appointment. Why not centralise the system across a network of surgeries, to make use of spare capacity? It could work similarly to online travel booking, where users can view multiple options and choose the most convenient one. If a patient’s registered GP has no appointments available soon, they could book at a nearby practice with open slots.
Our London visiting doctor service booking software is much more complicated as the system requires locations, travel time, traffic, doctors currently working and doctors on back up. That works smoothly, why can’t all surgeries do the same? It could even result in fewer missed appointments, as cancellations would be more efficient, less burdensome and easier if a simple cancellation link is provided in advance of the allotted time.
Take a step further. Introduce AI into the process, which may be able to tie in with the superb 111 service that can often bypass the need for a GP altogether. Primary care is the bottleneck, if we can reduce the pressure there, the whole system will benefit — particularly A&E.
We must be fair. This is not a problem universal across all GP surgeries, and in many parts of the country it is not an issue. But for tens of millions, this is a significant hurdle to accessing primary care. We are told that there are no “easy fixes” for the NHS crisis. To be honest, this is one. With the right political will, this could be solved in a matter of weeks.
Labour want to pick off low-hanging fruit that will make an immediate difference to the lives of countless patients across England? Here is exactly that. End the appalling 8am rush.
Charles Levinson