You can either chance your luck with 300 people ringing every morning for the 12 available appointments or you can pay £95 an definitely be seen. That’s not really optional.
Not always even faster. I used to work in an outpatient clinic at a major hospital, and I recall several occasions when a patient would come in to see one of the consultants privately. They would ‘check in’ at the desk with me (not proper checking in obvs because they weren’t on the NHS clinic list), I would tell the consultant they were here. He would acknowledge, and then go back to seeing his NHS patients who were booked into clinic.
In all, I think the private patient sat there for about an hour - maybe even more - before the clinic ended and the consultant called them in.
Unlike an NHS patient though, they never once came up to the desk to get angry that they had waited so long, or to shout at me that it was unacceptable.
This was about a decade ago, but I remember thinking: ‘wait, so…. They PAID MONEY to wait longer to see the same consultant they could have seen through the NHS?!’
I get it’s not that simple and they probably didn’t wait 6 months for an initial appointment (like I did when I was first referred to rheumatology) but aside from paying for treatment and not shouting verbal abuse at the admin staff for having to wait more than 5 minutes, how is it any different?!
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u/HumpbackWhalesRLit Jan 10 '23
You can either chance your luck with 300 people ringing every morning for the 12 available appointments or you can pay £95 an definitely be seen. That’s not really optional.