Then it may well be absorbed into the other practice as a second site, and may remain a fully active "branch" surgery. It may even have regular staff including doctors.


Par for the course. Historically, a GP would work alone and have a list of patients. When GPs moved into shared premises, the idea remained that a single GP would look after you from cradle to grave. Somewhere along the line, it changed. Later, with the 2004 contract, patients no longer had a GP responsible for them. They were registered with the practice and not the doctor. A fundamental change with the idea being that practices could be taken over by private companies and the patients would follow. Much harder to do if they're all registered to a GP. From then onwards, the idea has been you'll get seen by a doctor but it may not be the one that you are registered/assigned to (for paperwork). A few years ago, the Tories decided it'd be a great idea if everyone over 75 had a "named GP" - someone they could speak to regularly, who was responsible for their car. Soon after that, the idea spread. Lo and behold, everyone has a named GP. The Govt doing what they're good at - reinventing the wheel. The nominated GP is a paperwork exercise. You can still see any GP you wish. In our practice, we just divided everyone up based on surnames so they were spread out equally amongst the GPs. I have patients who have another GP nominated but they see me for regular car.


Things have changed in General Practice. Demand and workload have gone up. Historically, a GP would diagnose a patient as diabetic and send them off to the hospital who would look after them. The GP would have no further involvement in the diabetes area. Now, a GP will diagnose and manage diabetics. Some will initiate insulin when required. Type 1s are seen by specialists, as are those who are tricky to manage. Our practice population has remained the same in the five years I've been year. Demand has increased - we used to have 20-25 patients calling up for on-the-day appointments, with the rest of the appointments as being prebooked. That's now increased to 30+ patients a day. The number of appointments has gone up too - we have had 50% more appointments (ie patients being seen) in 2016 than back in 2010. And remember, the number of patients registered has not changed. There is more hospital dumping - patients are often discharged from hospital prematurely and advised to see their GP. Sometimes we have to send them back in. At other times, hospitals will ask the GP to chase up investigations arranged by the hospital and act accordingly.

In all honesty, the days of a GP knowing you is going. With the Tory dream of multi-practice centres (where three or four GP surgeries operating from one building, with up to 30 GPs in that building), continuity of care is gone. Some GPs have emigrated where there is more work-life balance and better pay and respect. Some have retired or wound down their workload to cope. Others have decided to locum so they don't have to worry about running a practice. A few suckers like myself stick it out.

Thanks CW for telling it like it is. I salute you.

modestly pissed, wanted to say more but kept deleting it so ended up with the above.

After thirteen years and 196,000 miles, we've decided to replace our car.
I've found exactly what I wan't (2nd hand) and it's a bargain price (one year old, just 20k miles and £10k off the list price of new).

I'm stuck on my oil rig until the 15th and my wife won't let me buy it (understandably so) until we've had a test drive on the 17th.

Hoping no one buys it between now and then.

I'm about to hit 100k in my car and it's been 9 years of ownership so far. I was planning on chopping and changing next year but no idea what to go for.

I didn't really want a larger car than we have now, but it was necessery to make sure my boys get enough leg room as they grow up. All the men on my wife's side of the family are over 6ft, and we plan to keep the car for ten years.
We're ditching the Corolla and getting an Avensis Estate instead.

On the plus side my car tax is dropping from £240 to £30 per year.

If you take your car for an MOT service at the regular garage that has been looking after your car for the last 9 years, and then your car fails the MOT on something the service really should've picked-up on, would that garage then foot the fee for the re-test of the car?
I know technically they are under no obligation to cover the re-test fee, but what's the likelihood that they will actually cover the cost?

Mark

Worth a try to ask but I wouldn't assume it. Did you ask them to do the service first?

If you asked them to service it and prepare it for the MOT / make sure that everything for the MOT is OK, you might have some comeback... That is what I used to do.

I get my car serviced twice a year at an independent garage about 100 miles away. I get the car MOT'ed around Christmas/New Year by a local garage. Both point out things that will need addressing within the next six months so I have yet to fail an MOT. My first advisory happened when the handbrake efficiency test was borderline. That's after eight years of car ownership.

With no jobs in sight and the fact that our money is running out - being made redundant last year wiped out what savings we had - so we decided to put the house on the market. I don't want to move but we might as well sell up and salvage what equity we can.

The estate agent's photographer doesn't come until tomorrow, and the house isn't officially on the market yet but we've already got viewings booked for Friday.

Thing is, since agreeing to this, I've had two short notice interviews in three days, a third one next week and I'm waiting for confirmation of a date for another. So, I'm in a bit of a pickle - if we receive a decent offer for the house, we really cannot afford to turn it down, in case I don't get a job quickly. Sod's law says we agree the sale and I get a job afterwards.

On the plus side, all this worrying is doing wonders for my waistline.

Well for better or worse, just accepting an offer isn't legally binding in England and Wales, so you can pull out any time up to signing.

At least being French you should be well versed in form filling.

Yep, I always take it to the garage for a specific MOT service before the MOT is done.
When booking it in I state it's an MOT service that's required.

Mark

Yeah, I know and it may yet come to that, but it's a real d!ck move - it's happened to me in the past.

Umm, what? French?

If you've been out of work for so long, don't the government pay the intrest payments (not the capital though) on your mortgage?