Ten per cent of GP patients account for more than two-fifths of face-to-face appointments, a major study has found, as it revealed the pressures put on services by “frequent attenders”.
Researchers at the University of Manchester analysed records of nearly 1.7 billion consultations over a 20-year period between 2000 and 2019.
I’m sure we’d find that ill people took more of the hospital slots too.
What I’m not seeing here in the reporting is the division into the classes we’d like for information purposes. Those who went to the GP for something to do and those who were actually ill…..
More research is needed to find the “main driving force” for frequent attendance in the UK, they added.
They’ve not found out what we actually want to know….
Ten percent of patients account for more than forty percent of appointments.
There. That wasn’t hard, was it?
The literature thing of avoiding repetition is inappropriate in factual reporting.
When I was younger I wouldn’t see my doctor from one year to the next. Now I’m a bit older I get more things going wrong with me.
Haven’t seen the quack for about 6 years, although do get a monthly script. I get the odd ailment, but usually try to avoid going ‘cos they’ll tell me to stop doing what I enjoy doing and tell me to do stuff I don’t. Plus test me for all sorts of maladies which can then be treated by Big Pharma’s finest products.
The secretaries (or whatever they are called – concentration camp guards possibly) treat me like an imbecile whenever I do go in though, as the regulars know all the procedures and I don’t.
Also, it should be obvious to them when they bring up my details, that I don’t attend often, so when I do want an appointment it is something important (well, to me anyway).
How many are hypochondriac / von Munchhausens syndrome / von Munchhausens syndrome by proxy?
Make everyone pay a charge and perhaps there would be less people taking the piss.
Fewer, not less….where is the edit button Tim?
Researchers at the University of Manchester analysed records of nearly 1.7 billion consultations over a 20-year period between 2000 and 2019. and found nothing of use. Bravo.
A charge for GP appointments seems sensible. I don’t know how it works in France, are the elderly or young children exempt? It would be a bit harsh for these groups (major users of GPs) to be prevented from necessary care, but there are plenty of poor elderly people and many young families are cash-strapped.
What Addolff says, I’m in a similar position although I haven’t even bothered the border guards in 3 years. My 75 year old mate had been even longer without seeing a doctor, until last week when he had a fall and broke something in his pelvis so he’s now in hospital and no doubt surrounded by hordes of them looking for things to treat. I can’t see him of course because hospitals are locked up tighter than Spandau, and I can’t talk to him on his mobile because the battery is flat and the nurses are all ignoring my pleas to plug in his charger for him.
Avoid going to hospital or even seeing the doctor if at all possible.
As soon as they get their claws into you, you’re screwed. They’ll get you onto pills, probably unnecessarily, which then have side effects, which need other pills, which have side effects, needing yada yada yada.
Why do people trust doctors? They’re just people as well, with all the failings and foibles of everyone else. But with the added weakness of thinking their profession makes them superior. In case they hadn’t noticed, they make money off other people’s suffering.
Quite a few say they aren’t in it for the money, they want to help people…
Hmm. Doesn’t explain why they all retire early when their pensions reach silly tax rates… Or they could just be lying sh*tlords.
Remember, this is a “profession” that until relatively recently thought lobotomies were a valid treatment for many things…
Isn’t this the law of the vital few and Pareto territory?
Applies to just about everything.
Ten per cent is around the number of people who are sick at any one time. And many of their conditions are chronic. On that basis I’d expect 10% of the GP’s list to account for 70% or more of appointments.
Adolff, my mate’s missus used to be a GP and she always said that she didn’t so much deal with the sick as the “concerned well”.
I’m ill but I don’t see the GP often because my case is “stable”. I do see a practice nurse every few weeks for a blood letting.
During the lockdown they wanted me to avoid the surgery and have my bloods done at the NHS encampment at a local park-and-ride. There turned out to be queues and short staffing. It took two and a half hours. Never again.
Henry, I wonder how many people feel a bit iffy, go onto the internet and discover they have all the symptoms of green parrot disease?
Got over it. I certainly speak of Polly a lot less than I used to.
I don’t see how paying for a visit has come up again when you can’t get in at all now. I still don’t believe in the hordes of people going there for fun, it’s a miserable experience from when you pick up the phone to when maybe months later you leave with a useless script for something that will not cure you but will keep you coming back. The whole fucking system is broken and it can no longer be patched.
Plus all the intrusive questions they ask which have no bearing on the ailment. I went in once because I had a trapped nerve in my arm – I literally couldn’t use it for anything much. I still had to tell them how many units of alcohol I drank in a week and whether I smoked. Whether the doctor believed the answers I don’t know but I suspect it didn’t change the treatment
Henry,
“Adolff, my mate’s missus used to be a GP and she always said that she didn’t so much deal with the sick as the “concerned well”.”
And just a lot of people, for whom the GP isn’t really necessary. General unwellness stuff that the GP can’t do much about, stuff that has a simple cure (e.g. go to bed and rest).
Here’s a thing I would 100% do if I was in charge of the NHS: no appointments after 3pm for pensioners. Appointments after that time are reserved for children and working people. Pensioners have all fucking day to choose from. It’s a major ballache for working people to have to go in at 11am or 2:30. But not only that, this is what the NHS was made for. It was initially thought it would pay for itself by reducing lost productivity, that people who were sick could get back to work sooner.
But it would also mean that the pensioners fight over the 9-3pm appointments. They aren’t going to sweat it to get an appointment for something trivial or ongoing that the GP can do sod all about. Or maybe the GP will start telling them to stop wasting their fucking time over their ongoing varicose vein problems.
Life used to be grim and people would retire at 65 and die soon after from the coal in their lungs or from smoking 40 Woodbines. We now have armies of bored people playing golf, going on cruises, gluing themselves to the motorway. Why not spend an hour sat in the GPs surgery? Countdown isn’t on for a few hours and what else are you going to do?
It’s not that they go for “fun”, but some people just cannot go without interaction with others, no matter how unpleasant.
This is the type that will get onto a bus and attempt to talk to every single person there before he leaves 10 stops later (not begging for change, just for conversation).
1.7 billion face to face consultations up to 2019.
The past two years of saving the NHS have put an end to that level of service for good.
M
“…some people just cannot go without interaction..”
Well we are social creatures and loneliness is a killer, even if only mentally.
Tell me again why I should pay for a miserable experience because others abuse it?
Rhoda” I still don’t believe in the hordes of people going there for fun”. Recusant and M see it,for some people it is their daily/weekly interaction. I have personal experience of this……(no, not me, someone I ‘do’ for).
If you try to understand other people you are going to be forever disappointed.
The other conclusion that one could make is that doctors are so shit at diagnosis it takes multiple goes for 10% of people to get anywhere close to some treatment that works.
Was hospitalised with Covid so 24/7 monitoring, multiple X-rays/scans and plenty of daily blood tests, before I went in no tablets now I have 4 repeat prescriptions and am still waiting for some tests, apparently giving people a booster they don’t need is much more important than scans that may find something early enough to treat.
When asked I say the worst part of having Covid was the mental effect of isolation in the hospital and the never-ending interaction with medical services since.
Though to be fair to my GP she did say I’m am at the age things start going wrong and being overweight was a major contributing factor and my fault in the first place, she is refreshingly blunt.
“ Though to be fair to my GP she did say I’m am at the age things start going wrong and being overweight was a major contributing factor and my fault in the first place, she is refreshingly blunt.”
Reminds me of a conversation with my very overweight GP who admitted he was embarrassed telling me I should lose some weight because I was just in the overweight BMI category. The irony was I was there asking him to give me some physio appointments because I was having trouble with my calf when I was running.
Anyway, I wish you a full recovery.
Why can’t I have a job like this. To be paid to come out with a report that does have any use whatsoever.
If I’m going to be paying for my GP I would think that my taxes will go down then. What was that? No. What a surprise.