Which country are you in and what’s a typical doctor visit like? How much? Wait time? Etc
I’m in France in a small village but I’m quite lucky with the doctor situation.
If I’m sick I go online, see what shot is available for my doctor and book it, usually in the best few days. If it’s urgent I can call or go there and I’ll usually get an appointment during the day with my doctor or one of the other two doctors working there.
Then I walk there since it’s 400m away.
UK.
Until recently, if I wanted an appointment I had to phone the GP surgery the moment it opened at 8:30 in the morning, wait in a phone queue for ten minutes or so before I got to speak to a receptionist who’d give me an appointment with which ever GP had some free time that day. It wasn’t usually possible to book an appointment several days in advance.
A couple of months back they switched to an app which gives much more flexibility, allows you to choose which doctor you want to see and allows you to book appointments in advance. I do worry that they’re going to push everyone to use that since old gippers are likely to struggle with the app unless they’re semi-tech savvy. Also, it’s obvious to me that they’re setting this up to use AI to triage requests if they’re not already doing that.
Appointments always used to be face to face but since covid they’re increasingly phone consultations especially for follow-ups. If it’s a first, diagnostic appointment it’s still likely to be face to face though.
For face to face, the wait time is generally less than half an hour from the point I get to the GP surgery.
Obv. it’s free at the point of use. I’ve paid my taxes.
Canadian here.
This one time 10 years ago I drove to my family doctor’s office without an appointment and got lucky that it was a walk in day.
I saw my doctor within an hour of arriving and it cost me nothing.
Hey! You better check if your family doctor is still there and say hi. At the minimum get a tetanus shot.
I have seen my family doctor many times since then. No worries.
Canada… Depends what kind of visit really. I captain a few rec teams, so breaks or dislocations, we’ll go to emergency, get triaged and wait for a bit.
If it’s somwthing I’d like to get checked out but not urgent, I’ll schedule an appointment with my family dr, might take a week or 2?
For something sooner, I’ll go to one of the several walk in clinics nearby. Wait time really varies but generally pretty quick as long as I get there a little early.
Germany,rural area.
I call my GP. It might take a few tries to get through. Tell the receptionist what I’ve got, she is more or less trying to triage me. When it’s urgent enough and I am calling early enough I can usually get there on the same day but have to wait longer at the office,if it’s less serious it’s mostly one or two days,but with less waiting time at the office. To check in you hand them your insurance card. Medication is prescribed electronically, so you just hand the card (or do it online) at the pharmacy. The GP visit is free, medication has a small, limited copay. You get fully paid for 6 weeks of sickness per diagnosis by your employer, reduced pay for up to 2 years by the health insurance.
If it’s an illness requiring a specialist I can also try to book an appointment for that directly - but while that works well in larger cities it is totally impossible here, you simply won’t get an appointment, not even in a year. The same happens when your GP refers you to a specialist,but there are mechanisms to give you a more urgent appointment - which works sometimes,sometimes they don’t.
Sweden.
A few alternatives:
- I could book an appointment at the local health center. I would probably get a time at the earliest next week, and it would cost me $30. Health center doctors are generally quite overworked, and can sometimes be a bit dismissive of your issues in my experience, but they will help you. If you need specialist care, they will give you a referral, which could take several months depending on the priority of the case and the type of specialist.
- I could use an app to get access to a video call with a doctor, after having described my symptoms in the app. I would get a video call the same day and it would cost me $30. Given the remote nature of this kind of contact, they can be a bit limited in what they can do for you, but will try to help you regardless. If your case requires in-person examination, they will ask you to go to a health center instead. If you need specialist care, they will give you a referral and you’ll have to wait the same amount of time as for a referral in the health center scenario.
- I am lucky enough to have a private health insurance plan through my employer. If I have any problems, I’ll submit them to this private health insurer, and they put a human on the case and connects me with a specialist right away if the problem warrants one. Typically this happens the same or the next day. This costs me nothing, apart from what I pay in benefit taxes to be on the private health insurance plan.
All in all, things work fairly well in Sweden, but having gotten private health insurance has definitely jaded me a bit on account of how much better the experience is when you have that. If only the public system wasn’t systematically underfunded and run by the dumbest politicians on offer in the country, then maybe everyone could have great patient experience.
What sort of money does one need to spend in Sweden to get private health insurance? Can you stop paying the government one if you have that? (In Germany, I’m publicly insured so idk private prices, but you pay either one and not both, it’s not like normal taxes that you always pay)
You can’t opt out of government-provided health insurance. It’s not even really referred to as health insurance, it’s really just referred to as health care.
I get my additional private health insurance paid for by my employer, so I never actually pay myself, but the same one seems to be going for about €110 a month.
I don’t know that I would buy it if I had to pay myself, but I’m quite happy to get it for the small amount of additional taxes I have to pay on the benefit from the employer.
Thanks! Good system that you can’t opt out imo, everyone needs to at least fund it even if (perhaps not good but idk) not everyone needs to also use it (thinking of rich people in power)
Does these costs count towards the högkostnadsskydd? (cost ceiling)
Yes, but there are two different ones - one for medical appointments and one for medicine.
i just go 😊
Germany. When I am sick I call my doctor in the morning ask what time would be best to go there as to not wait too long. Then I go there, wait maybe an hour sometimes because he likes taking time for his patients, tell him my symptoms, get a sick note for work and possibly a prescription if I need medication.
I dont pay anything for the visit. If I need medication I will go to the pharmacy near my flat after the visit give them my health card, get my medication and depending on what drug I got pay a little bit, maybe 5€ , maybe a bit more.
Dont forget you can write sick threw phone call now
Yeah but you need to go there once a quartal to give them your insurance card. So if you are sick less than that you still need to go every time.
Nope. I had Magen-Darm at home and there was no way I’d go anywhere outside. They accepted that TK service to send them my proof of insurance via Fax or Email.
I’ve heard there should be another option, iirc bringing the card in later when you’re not sick/infectious anymore (better for everyone methinks), but that this takes extra administration on their side and so they mostly refuse to acknowledge you have this legal option. Or so a colleague mentioned some months ago, I probably mix up some details
Ah ja stimmt
Germany:
I call the office
I schedule a time (and maybe a date if it’s not urgent)
I go there
I get my treatment (advice), a prescription and if needed when to reschedule
I go to the apothecary and redeem my medication (usually without extra charges. But some arent subsidized 100% and you need to pay the remaining)
I get better again
I start workingFrance, not a big city. If I’m sick. I call the doctor office, in another city because all doctors here have no places. I may book an appointment in two or three weeks. If I really need a doctor, I can book an appointment to “sos doctor”, that I will pay for a part (and part healthcare), or go to a non-vital emergency doctor at night, which is expensive (for a doctor in France) but reimbursed by healthcare. I can have access to this because I’m still in/near a city.
The waiting time in a doctor office can be long, depending if they take time for their patients or not. I’m ok with that. If I have an appointment to my usual doctor, I don’t pay or I only pay a little part which will be reimbursed minus 1€ (50/year max). There are doctors with exceding fees, like “sos doctor”, those feeds are out of my pocket. Most of the time, we have healthcare AND private insurance, but there is a health insurance for poor people.
For medecine, most of the times we don’t pay anything but there are fees, 1€/medecine box (50/year max, but not the same as the 50 for doctors).
United Kingdom, Dorset.
My 3 year old daughter was vomiting and not keeping liquids down. Phoned the non-emergency line and after a bit of a wait, spoke to them and went through the script.
Was told to go to A&E and we would be expected. After a short wait there, was led down to the children’s ward and she was given a bed in her own room. She was put on a drip, had antibiotics and kept in overnight. By the end of the following day she was able to keep down water and some toast so was discharged.
Had a follow on call from a GP the next day, she was back to normal in a couple of days.
Cost: £0 (I contribute to the NHS through general taxation)
Overnight stay at a hospital here in the US is at least $3,000 / £2.196 / €2.552
When you don’t have health insurance, I’d assume? Because the tax system is basically the UK health insurance so I’m not sure if it’s a fair comparison in that case (the amount you pay through taxes or to a private insurance company might be very different though, but then that’d imo be the number to compare)
Oh, that’s with insurance. How much you have to pay out of that amount is determined by what your insurance plan covers.
This has been pretty much our experience too when our kids have been ill, except they didn’t have their own room but a small ward.
Yes I think we got lucky with the room, perhaps it was just a quiet period
That sounds kind of scary, did they actually get to the bottom of what happened or was it just “Hey, she can eat toast now, you’re free to go!”
Yes it was gastroenteritis, luckily she bounced back quite quickly!
Wow! I had no idea that was even possible for a 3 year old! Glad she’s OK!
UK here
I phone my GP. They say you have you call at 0830 to get an appointment. Call back tomorrow. I ask for an advance appointment and they say they have nothing for 6+ weeks. So I call back the next day and the line is constantly busy. I get through at 0837 after mashing redial constantly. I’m told the appointments are all gone and I should call back tomorrow again. They suggest “if it’s urgent then go to the A&E department”…which is clearly inappropriate for my problem. So I call back the next day. The next day I happen to get through at 0833 and they take my details. I’m told the doctor will call me back at some point later that day. Spend the day watching the phone, but can’t answer it because I’m work. Duck out of something really important at work to take the call, I’m told to come to the GP later in the day. Later in the day I have work stuff I can’t just leave immediately, so I ask for an appointment the next day. Get told to phone back at 0830 the next day to male an appointment.
I’ve figured out a way to short circuit the system. There’s a national urgent medical line (111) and I have to answer the operator’s questions for 20 min (am I bleeding precisely? Am I unable to breathe? Am I going to die imminently?). Finally, they’re able to allocate an appointment for my own GP at a sensible time the next day…which the fucking GP wouldn’t give me. Great! I go to the GP to be seen by a FY2 doctor (i.e. 15 months posts undergraduate qualification), this guy admits that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he’ll speak to the GP later and phone me back with the outcome later that day. He phones me back later that day saying they don’t know what to do so they’re going to refer me to a hospital specialist, the hospital appointment should be sent to me in 10 months or so.
The few times I have had to go to the A&E department with my kid, I’ve taken chargers, entertainment devices, extra coat for my kid to use as a blanket, food, water, video game console…I’m expecting to be there for about 6 hours of things move really quickly.
The state of national healthcare in this country!. Thank you Conservatives, for 13 years of record low investment.
There’s a national urgent medical line (111)
What? I’ve been lied to. I was told the UK line was 0118 999 881 999 119 725… 3
I have health insurance in the US and still have to pay a fuckton in copays to use it.
In early May, I searched GPs on my Healthcare plan, and I get to see a doctor on Jully 11.
111 isn’t an urgent line (if it’s genuinely an emergency go to A&E or call 999) and from personal experience it takes hours for them to get back to you, at which point you’ve either already told them your symptoms have got worse, still had no call back and gone to A&E or they get back to you eventually and tell you that you might be fine, but should go to the hospital anyway and sit in a queue for 6 hours so they can make sure it’s not actually something serious. NHS 111 is just as useless as the NHS Direct it replaced
For GP appointments that are released on the day, in the morning, you can avoid waiting in a long call queue to the GP by booking the appointment through the NHS app if your GP supports it.
Very much this.
If you live in the UK download the fucking app.
If all the ppl. bitching about the phone lines just used the app. then the ppl that actually HAVE to use the phone lines (digitally excluded ppl) wouldn’t have so long to wait \ phone back every day.
Every time I’ve needed to contact the gp for something I’ve done it through the app and then I’ve either been contacted back with advice \ an appt or an onward referral within 24 hours.
If you need help quicker than 24 hours it’s an emergency, if you think it’s an emergency but don’t want to go to a and e it’s not a fucking emergency.
If all the ppl. bitching about the phone lines just used the app. then the ppl that actually HAVE to use the phone lines (digitally excluded ppl) wouldn’t have so long to wait \ phone back every day.
Is the app free of trackers and does it run on open operating systems like google-less Android? As in, no attempts at root detection, trying to use Google Play Services, etc.
I probably don’t have to explain this viewpoint on Lemmy as much as to the general public but not everyone who could use a nice locked-down big tech phone that phones home to facebook wants to carry that around all day, nor buy two phones when the govt could also just make it a website that runs on any OS and any device because it’s made of open standards
(If this sounds outlandish: this is pretty much what the government-funded public transport app for Germany is like. Want to buy a ticket? Better hope the algorithm likes your payment method, takes your money, and that you can run their software to display your ticket)
You can use the website instead of using the app.
Same login.
Oh, perfect!
Ehh… . Better but not perfect. Not everything on the app is on my web portal annoyingly but most things are. shrug
Some hospitals are horribly staffed like this. In Sweden I had this problem until I changed to a different (government-owned) GP.
From south Brazil.
For something not urgent I can usually get a private GP within a week or a specialist within a month.
For something a bit more urgent, usually 1-2 hours in a private hospital, or 2-6 hours in a public one.
When going private the health insurance has always covered everything, so no cost.
Never had an emergency so I can’t say how it is.Canada, I make an appointment with my family doctor, usually within a week, free. Specialists are more annoying because our right wing provincial government keeps chipping away at public healthcare and justifying it with its own results, but generally goes pretty quick too.
Honestly depends.
If it’s life or death urgent, an ambulance arrives, takes you away and with any luck, fix you right up. Visitors will likely have to pay to park at the hospital, and that will be your biggest expense. When my dad had a cardiac arrest, it was during covid, so the parking was free. The biggest expense was cleaning his blood off the carpets and putting their cat in the cattery for a week.
If it’s something non-urgent, and the cause isn’t immediately found by a doctor, then you might go on a waiting list and be seen in a few months maybe. And even then it might not get sorted. It’s not like House.
The most annoying bit is the 8am phone roulette to try and get an appointment.
If he had a bat would you put it in a battery?
