Do you know what you’re entitled to and in what circumstances when it comes to your healthcare?

There are a bunch of “easy read” leaflets on the GOV website, which tell you all about your rights and entitlements if you’re a UK resident using NHS services. The Government states it’s committed to “empowering patients to shape and manage their own health and care”. This is supposed to mean giving us greater control and choice over how we receive our healthcare.

I don’t know about your experiences, but the following information that should be adhered to is already failing in my area. More on my experiences and how to make a complaint at the bottom of this article.

You have a legal right to choose which GP practice you register with and to ask to see a particular doctor or nurse at that GP practice.

Choosing a GP practice

You may wish to register with a GP practice that’s more convenient for you to access (near work, for example), but is not close to your home. There’s a possibility that this could mean you’re unable to access out-of-hours services or be eligible for home visits if you live outside the practice’s normal boundaries, which should be carefully considered and discussed with the practice before registering.

A GP practice must accept you onto its patient register unless it has reasonable grounds for not doing. Reasonable grounds may include:

• Being at maximum capacity and not taking on any new patients
• You live outside the practice boundary
• A clinical need, circumstance, or safety issue makes it inappropriate for you to use a practice outside the area you live

If a GP practice is not able to accept you onto its patient register it must inform you of the reasons for this.

Choosing a particular clinician

A practice must provide you with a choice of doctor or nurse unless it has reasonable grounds for not doing. Reasonable grounds include:

• They are on leave or have no available appointments
• You require an urgent appointment

Digital primary care

You may also wish to access primary care services digitally. This can be useful for those with chronic illnesses as it removes the need to travel to appointments, making services more accessible. All patients have the right to access primary care services digitally (since April 2021), such as web and video consultations

My experience

As I write this, in July 2023, there are no web or video consultations offered by my GP practice. For a while, you could submit an eConsult form on the GP website. This was supposed to be responded to within one working day. This is no longer offered – although the website still has it on there, you just get an error message saying the GP is not currently offering this service when you click on it. It was useless anyway. On no less than THREE occasions, I didn’t get a response from filling in this (long-winded) form, and had to chase them up a week later. On one occasion I had to chase the same one twice.

There’s also never any possibility of getting an appointment with the clinician you want to speak to, because:

1. It’s usually staffed by locums
2. They only offer on-the-day appointment bookings, so you’re lucky to get an appointment at all, never mind one with the right person.

I did swap GPs in 2019, and the process was pretty simple. However, I did lose access to all of the appointment notes from the previous GP, despite them using the same SystmOnline service, and it being MY data. Mind-boggling, right?

It’s definitely a fact that we play a postcode lottery when it comes to how care is delivered throughout the UK, with some areas being way ahead of others. Let me know your experiences in the comments!

If you’re having issues relating to any of the above, follow the complaints process below to resolve this.

Making a complaint

If you are not offered these choices and are unhappy, first you should raise the issue with the GP practice. If you’re unsatisfied with the outcome, you can contact your local clinical commissioning group (CCG), which you can find here. CCGs are responsible for organising the delivery of most NHS services in England. If your issue remains unresolved, you should contact NHS England:

• Phone 0300 311 22 33
  • People who are hearing or speech impaired: dial 18001 followed by 0300 311 22 33.
  • British Sign Language (BSL) users can NHS England via BSL video interpreter.
• Email england.contactus@nhs.net
• Write to NHS England, PO Box 16738, Redditch, B97 9PT

If the issue is still unresolved, the final step in the complaints process is to contact the independent Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. You should go through the above processes first. To make a complaint to the ombudsman, you can:

• fill in a complaints form on the website
• call the helpline: 0345 015 4033
• use the textphone (Minicom): 0300 061 4298
• text ‘call back’ with your name and your mobile number to 07624 813 005. You will be called back within one working day during office hours (Monday to Friday, 08:30am to 5:30pm)