Doctor Amir Khan has criticised the government’s new digital phone system upgrade, designed to “end the 8am scramble” for GP appointments
All GP surgeries in England will move to the digital system by the spring of next year. It is hoped it will allow patients to contact their GP faster and have their request dealt with on the day rather than having to call back.
Speaking on GMB, Dr Khan said: “Unless we have got the appointments, it doesn’t matter how many get through. It’s a bit like a magic roundabout where every exit is a dead end. You’re just shifting the bottleneck.”
All GP surgeries in England will move to the digital system by the spring of next year. It is hoped it will allow patients to contact their GP faster and have their request dealt with on the day rather than having to call back.
Speaking on GMB, Dr Khan said: “Unless we have got the appointments, it doesn’t matter how many get through. It’s a bit like a magic roundabout where every exit is a dead end. You’re just shifting the bottleneck.”
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NewsTranscript
00:00 play you a clip of what Dr Amir said to us earlier about this situation because he was
00:04 saying to us although he welcomes the fact that you know the money's being put in to
00:08 make sure that these phone systems are upgraded you actually do need to have the capacity
00:12 to be able to see people at the end and he's suggesting that's why the take up for this
00:18 service hasn't been as high as it should have been so far at this stage but I just want
00:21 to play you what he said to us a short time ago.
00:24 Unless we've got the appointments to give out it doesn't matter how many patients get
00:29 through in the morning it's a bit like a magic roundabout where every exit is a dead end
00:34 so we're just shifting that bottleneck from the initial phone line in the morning to where
00:39 the appointments are and unless they get that workforce right there's always going to be
00:44 a problem and patients will be disappointed.