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Right to choose

Darlz

Hi, both of my daughters (16/18) are on the waiting list for an assessment. I’ve been looking at right to choose providers for this area and the process to be referred. I would need a face to face GP appointment for each, and the GP would need to fill out referral forms with all sorts of questions relating to symptoms.

1.Getting face to face appointments is incredibly hard. Or any appointments for that matter.

2. Neither of my girls have been referred by or seen a doctor relating to their referrals to CAMHs, they’ve been referred by college/counsellor.

3. We’ve not seen an actual doctor at our surgery in years, they all quit and the surgery was taken over this year by some other provider.

4. If we get an appointment, how am I supposed to get all information across in 5 minutes? Is there a quicker way to do this? Pre fill in the information myself for example?

If I had £250 I’d fork out for two private GP appointments which are 30 mins long, because that feels like the only way to get a stress free appointment with an actual doctor with enough time to go over it all.

Sorry for the long post. I just end up stressed out when it comes to dealing with my GP surgery! 

  • in reply to lawlozuk

    That’s really helpful, thank you! I’ll  do the same, I’m sure the surgery will appreciate me not taking up an appointment if it’s really not necessary if they can just do the referral without seeing the girls. It saves the stress of trying to get an appointment and at a time when they’re not at college too, or I’m at work as they always want me with them. 
    Thanks again! 

  • My GP has an online e-consulting service apparently open for an hour or so each weekday morning where you can write a brief summary of your need for GP appoint or request repeat prescriptions, etc.

    I didn't want to visit GP practice because it always leads to stress or not conveying things properly or efficiently enough, so I went to use the online e-consulting service, which of course was not working over a 1 month period.

    So I rang reception expecting having to grudgingly make an GP appointment for some unknown future date, I explained the situation that I have problems visiting the GP practice due to mobility issues and that I suspected I may have ASD, had found a Right to Choose Provider, downloaded and filled RTC GP letter template, downloaded and completed AQ-10 questionnaire and couldn't access the GP online e-consulting service for around a month prior.

    The receptionist was very helpful and actually offered the GP practices' email address, which is not advertised on the GP practice website, where I could email my RTC letter, AQ-10 form and a brief summary for email.

    My RTC request was approved within 3 weeks, ASD assessment a month after that and now just awaiting ASD report.

    Good luck!

  • in reply to Paper

    Yeah our area is awful. The online booking system for appointments has disappeared now, it was a couple of months wait before. So I don’t t know if we can make advance appointments, I just get told to call back every day. And I much prefer to use the engage consult online thing for the same reason, plus I start work at exactly the time I need to call to attempt an appointment so I quite often forget to get on at the right time. Then the receptionist gate keeps/triages whether you qualify for any kind of appointment.
    The trouble is, the last few times I’ve tried to use the E consult it says they’ve reached their daily maximum requests, by 9am. A different surgery deals with the telephone calls linked to the E consult too, so we can’t actually see the doctor we speak to on a phone call.
    It’s a right mess.

  • It's difficult for me to get in touch with a GP too. I think it varies based on where you are in the country and how over-crowded it is. Where I lived before it was a 5 week wait to see a GP and incredibly difficult to make the appointment - it involved calling up between 07.55 and 08.00 in the morning and you were put on hold in a queue and if you didn't get through then you had to try again the next day. It was so annoying that I basically couldn't use the doctor for years even when I was in serious pain.

    Thankfully it's a bit better where I am now.

    But really all you can do is make the appointment. If there is a long wait then wait. Appointments shouldn't be 5 minutes, they should be 10 minutes, but no GP will kick you out if you aren't finished, they delay the next patient instead, which is why you so often wait for so long in the waiting area. Or you can always make another appointment. An autism diagnosis isn't time-critical, it's a lifelong thing.

    It doesn't matter if you don't know who your GP is or it changes, you can just see any GP to get a referral.

    Some GPs have online system or apps now which allow you to write a request instead and then they will respond by text or call you back. That's a much better system for me because I'm really bad at talking but I can write things down and it gives me time to properly formulate what I want to say.