22 Sep 06 Love in Trafalgar Square

Love

19 Sep 06 Photo Exhibition!

Some exciting news… Two prints of mine have been selected for the London Independent Photography annual exhibition! It’s the first time I’ll have framed work on public display, so it’s quite a thrill, really. I look forward to meeting the other photographers and seeing their images in the show. The details:

London Independent Photography’s 18th Annual Photographic Exhibition
Sunday 15 October - Saturday 28 October 2006
Cottons Atrium at Hay’s Galleria, Southwark (map)
Free admission

Richard Sadler FRPS and Sara Macintosh MA, both of whom have a keen professional eye for exciting, intriguing and engaging work, have selected entries for this 18th annual exhibition, which showcases the best independent photography in London.

19 Sep 06 The Ongoing GP Saga

There’s now a new post category entitled ‘healthcare’ to keep up with the bureaucratic system I’m dealing with here! In my last post I was excited to finally have an appointment with a GP - well it didn’t happen.

I showed up at the ’surgery’ (what’s known as a doctor’s office here) at the scheduled time for my appointment, and waited 25 minutes before my name was called. I walked into the assigned room and sat beside a woman seated at a computer. She entered all the details on the reg form I filled out last week, took my blood pressure and weighed me in. Then she said, “So when you want to make an appointment with a doctor you need to call on a Monday to get an appointment for the following week.” Standard practice at this surgery, apparently. She sent me on my way.

Yesterday morning I called to make an appointment, which meant hitting the redial button about 30 times after a busy signal before connecting through to a human. I am now booked to see an official GP, I hope, for 26 September.

12 Sep 06 Find A Doc

In a couple of hours I have a ‘new patient’ appointment with a GP in my area. Not so interesting or exciting, is it? It is interesting when you consider the difficulty I encountered in arriving at this point.

Way back in February I knew that to receive NHS care it would be necessary to ‘register’ with a GP. I started making calls to practices in my neighbourhood to ask if they were accepting new patients. The first office I called said yes, they were, so I booked an appointment. At the end of the call the receptionist told me there would be a £50 fee for the initial assessment appointment. I asked why NHS didn’t cover the fee and was informed that the practice was private, and NHS would not cover any of their services. I promptly cancelled the appointment and started searching for NHS doctors in the area.

With my shortlist in hand I began walking into practices to find one that felt right. A couple of the offices I visited put me off instantly for such reasons as the waiting room was way overcrowded, the offices appeared unclean or the receptionist was seated behind a cage. I’m of the opinion any person attending their doctor’s office should be comfortable with the service and surroundings.

I quickly learned none of my thoughts mattered. Every patient registering with a GP falls within a catchment area defined by their postal code. This means you cannot see a NHS GP near your office or anywhere you please for that matter, but must attend a practice accepting patients from your address. The shortlist just got shorter.

Feeling deflated, I turned to my local council website for some guidance and discovered the Find A Doc service. You email or call and they provide names of GPs you can see. Back in April I received a ‘list’ of two practices, and just a couple of weeks ago I scouted each of them to choose which I preferred.

The one I preferred was not accepting new patients.

Lots changes in three months I guess, so I called Find A Doc again and received my new shortlist: one practice (the one I didn’t prefer previously). How’s that for healthcare choice?

Yesterday I arrived early (opening time) at the practice and was faced with a lineup at least 25 deep ahead of me. I took a slow breath and chose to wait - I need to finally break in and get my space in the system! Within ten minutes I counted about 25 new people behind me in line.

When I reached the receptionist she immediately asked me what country I was from and I produced my passport. She began to form a sentence that began with “We can’t” or “You don’t”, so I cut in to show my visa, which is valid until 2011. I also needed to provide a proof of address (telephone bill) which was photocopied, and fill out a registration form.

With the number of people in line, how soon could I possibly get in for an appointment? I was amazed to be booked next day, but I expect a long wait regardless.

Why does NHS restrict access to GPs by catchment area? It seems obvious that densely populated, underserved areas will suffer the exact issues I’m dealing with. What happens when the practice I’m attending is no longer accepting patients? The strain will fall on local hospitals.

National healthcare in Canada provides for any person to attend any practice they wish (within their province), provided they are accepting patients. Doesn’t that make more sense? That way every person has freedom of choice and strain on the healthcare system is, ideally, evenly distributed across cities and beyond.

Perhaps NHS is moving in that direction with the recent policy change giving patients some latitude with specialist and hospital care.

For today, though, if I don’t like the doctor I’ve been dealt I’ve just got to suck it up.