06 Jul Health care to order.

Onswitch Junior needs his teenage booster vaccinations. Ringing our local GP surgery, we are informed that appointments are only available between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. When he is either at, or travelling home from, school.

Taking time out of school does not appear to be an option in this era of fines and black marks for unauthorised absence, and anyway, working full time and travelling round the country is not always conducive to being available to take him Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

What really got our blood boiling was being told that practically all the available vaccination appointments are booked solid for weeks due to the winter flu jabs. Now we’ve had a flyer promoting this campaign through from the GP, and adverts urging those of a certain age to register are all over the press – surgeries know that they are going to be busy, because they are driving the demand!

In any other business, when offering a service above and beyond the norm, especially one that you know is going to be popular, you staff up accordingly. You make more time available and brace yourself for the rush. You don’t appear surprised when the system can’t cope and ‘computer says no’.

Any good marketing campaign focuses on capacity planning. There is nothing worse than driving demand and not being able to match supply – consumers have limited patience and enthusiasm, and will simply give up unless you make it very easy for them to access your services and products. Health care and pet care are no different – many owners don’t really understand exactly why they must pay for annual vaccinations anyway, and many of those that do begrudge shelling out the funds. Unless we make it easy for them to fit vaccinating their animal into their busy lives, they simply won’t do it.

If you have a call reporting system at your business, take a look at the number of lost calls in the evenings and over the weekend. These are the times when working owners want to access health care for their pets, yet many practices are closed for routine consults. With team members rostered at these times to cover emergency care, and costing the practice money to do so, does it not make sense to provide standard care then too?

It seems so obvious to us, yet red tape, budget holder bureaucracy and a “we’ve always done it that way” mentality seem to be stopping the NHS appointment system joining the modern world.

Please don’t let it stop you.