Online GP requests must now remain available from 8am to 6:30pm on weekdays at practices in England, allowing patients to describe a rash at 3:14pm instead of joining a dawn queue that sounds like a raffle for oxygen.
The Department of Digital Waiting Rooms has declared victory over the 8am scramble. Patients must now select whether their emergency is red, amber or the colour of a browser wheel thinking very hard. The NHS has not abolished uncertainty. It has given uncertainty a form.
Practices will still assess every request. That matters. A clinician can distinguish chest pain from someone who ate a lemon while reading medical forums. An online form mostly distinguishes boxes from slightly larger boxes, before passing the responsibility to somebody with a clinical qualification and an inbox already breathing heavily.
‘The front door is open all day,’ said Dr Mabel Clickwell, Deputy Keeper of the Appointment Hatch. ‘The corridor beyond it remains medically supervised and, regrettably, real.’
The change is intended to free telephone lines and make access more consistent. Patients welcomed the prospect of a form, mainly because a form cannot put them on hold to Vivaldi. It can, however, invite them to explain the exact moment a mild headache became a potential six part documentary.
Practices must also publish clearer information and maintain processes for feedback and concerns. This gives patients several routes for explaining that the previous route provided no route at all. Somewhere, a committee is admiring the elegant circularity of this achievement.
Reception staff have spent years combining triage, diplomacy and occasional semaphore through a ringing phone. Their reward is a quieter inbox, which will soon contain 400 messages titled “quick question”, each followed by a medical autobiography, three family histories and a photograph taken in lighting that makes the rash look politically significant.
The wider plan includes extra funding, more appointments and more GPs. More capacity is useful. It is not a magic portal. No clinician can make an appointment appear by shouting “digital transformation” into a laminator, although several laminators are now listed as having leadership potential.
By teatime, the old phone scramble had become a quieter national sport. Everyone refreshed an inbox with the devotion once reserved for festival tickets. One patient received a reply before their kettle boiled. The kettle was later asked to share its methods, but declined on privacy grounds and was immediately offered a follow up form.
Real story: Department of Health and Social Care.
