Too many questions

 Once upon a time, if you needed to see a doctor, you phoned up or called in at the surgery and made an appointment.  Not any more. Now you can only make an appointment on the same day.  And you have to phone at 8,00 am when the lines open.  Purportedly.  But they don’t.  They are always engaged.  And when you finally get through, all the appointments have gone.  ‘Try again tomorrow’ they say cheerfully.   After four days of this my dear husband was so enraged, I feared for his mental health.  Then someone said to try something called econsult.   

First of all you need a computer.  And you need to know how to use it so that excludes the poor and those who do not have a computer as they've lived perfectly well without one for 80+ years. 

But, no matter. Husband dies have a computer and some rudimentary knowledge.  After half an hour and much cursing I am summoned to assist.  I don’t know much either.  But between us we find the relevant pages and supply all manner of information.   They want a passport or a driving licence photo too.   Now 44% of Londoners don’t have a car and only 76% have a passport.  Excluding again.  

But husband does and after another forty minutes of photographing and uploading we are in.   And then begins the box ticking.  Completely irrelevant matters such as how much alcohol do you drink for example.  Then you asked to describe the problem.  A small lesion on his scalp.  But that won’t do.  Size, colour, texture, edges, height, and on and on.   

Then they demand a photograph of it.  He has to kneel down so that I can photograph his scalp.   The cat wonders in and gets in the photograph too.  (They didn’t ask if there was a cat in the household). Then the photo has to be cropped.   And then, having uploaded this photograph there appears a box where you asked to describe the lesion.   

I wrote that bit.  ‘Precisely as described and photographed above’. Finally, after over an hour it’s finished.  We click submit.  And then it asks How did we do? Perhaps it’s just as well that he clicked off before I wrote my furious response.   

And then, at 6.45 a doctor telephones.  ‘You need to come to the surgery tomorrow so that I can see it’.  

So, there were appointments after all.  And it did need to be seen.  

And some outsourced group of teenagers commissioned by our now privatised NHS had a load of fun wasting patients’ time and excluding great swathes of the population.   

I asked my computerless 88 yr old neighbour what she does.   Oh, she said ‘I just turn up and sit there until they get so sick of me I get seen.  

My friend E says she handwrites a letter addressed to the Dr and gives it to the receptionist.  

There must be better ways.   Like a phone call and an appointment.  

Is this worse than a disappearing electrician?  The jury’s out.