this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Wait is it normal to need an appointment for a GP visit?
Here in Scotland, yes. I usually opt for a phone appointment because I'm lazy. It's never urgent but I can still get one within a couple of days. And that's with the surgery having recently closed its list to new patients because of a population surge in the town (new housing).
It's normal in Ireland. I can always get one same day or next day.
I feel like this infographic is full of shite on the GP part tbh.
The "Study" that this infographic is based on is full of shit. The deeper I dig into the data the more disgusted I get with it. It uses old / weird sources for a number of countries (for instance that US wait time is from the pandemic), they change up terms (Non-Emergency and Elective are not the same thing) and a whole host of other problems.
I mean, in Australia it is, although you can usually get one the same day/next day. Not sure where the 4 days comes from. The 21 days from the US is just madness tho, if accurate. By the time you see the doctor whatever you had had either passed or has killed you.
It comes from here.
That's a solid / highly regarded source but the data they used stretches as far back as 2000. Four days to see a GP may have been accurate in 2014 but could easily be out of date now.
That 21 days number was a nationwide average from during the pandemic. I tracked down their source and while the infographic says "2023" the study source says 2021-2022...right during the pandemic. So not only is the year wrong the infographic is mislabled / misleading.
The study is fucking trash and someone took that trash, piled it into a dumpster, and then set it on fire in order to produce the infographic.
I didn't think these are "sick visits". I'm in the US and can see my GP within a day if I'm sick, but scheduling a physical will be much further out.
I can't get a sick visit in a day. within a few days maybe. they tell me to go to urgent care if its that bad which is possible same day but not your primary care who knows you medical history.
Interesting, where are you? It's more or less the opposite here (Austria). Hospitals will let you wait for ages (like 2 hours, possibly even more if it's particularly busy) if you walk in with something that doesn't require immediate treatment and/or their more advanced machines, and they'll tell you you shouldn't waste emergency resources for that stuff. I'm talking about COVID or the flu or things like that as a healthy young adult. But GPs will always take walk-ins for immediate issues. Mine has a wait time of 10-30 mins for walk-ins.
YMMV. Only speaking from my experience. Even a "few days" is better than the 21 shown in the graph.
What would you consider to be a "physical"?
The comparison about countries is hard to understand because I'm not sure of what constitutes as one or another.
Where I live I can walk in on a public hospital and see a doctor within two hours if I don't have any risk that would give me priority. Then if the doctor asks for an exam or x-ray or something, it might be done shortly after on the same hospital if there's some time concern, or they may just request you to do the exam and then you can go after it yourself. In this case getting it for free can take quite some time, so there's several private clinics that people go to only for exams - they can sometimes do it within one or two days, other times it takes longer.
However if you need surgery or something more advanced, you may end up dying on a waiting list if the doctors don't properly detect how much of a risk you're at. I don't have any personal experience with this part of the Healthcare system though so I'm only saying this based on stories I've heard and from some news coverage I've seen in the past.