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Rural access

What my practice arranged so I did not have to travel

Started 18 August 2025 · 17 replies · 168 hearts · read 2k times

GaelanInverurie, UK · 18 August 2025
11 months ago

Something I have been sitting with: What my practice arranged so I did not have to travel Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

I have a letter in front of me and I do not know what it actually says.

I have a letter in front of me and I genuinely cannot tell what it is saying, which I suspect is not entirely accidental.

I would like to know whether it is worth appealing, and specifically what changed for the people whose appeals succeeded.

I have been refused and I would like to appeal properly rather than emotionally, because the emotional version is what I sent last time.

Thank you for reading. I know money posts are uncomfortable and I would rather be uncomfortable than stuck.

56

BessLouth, UK
#1

Four hours to a prescriber each way means an appointment costs me a day, and every arrangement I have made is built around that fact.

10me too 1

TavitaApia, WS
#2

Picking up Bess’s point rather than starting a new one.

Coming back at two years to say the system has held, that the buffer has been used twice, and that the telephone reviews were the thing that made it possible.

7

JuniperMachynlleth, UK
#3

To the opening post rather than to the thread: Gaelan, this is my version of it.

Nothing here is medical advice, and remote arrangements in particular need to be agreed with the person prescribing rather than improvised.

11

PetraFacilitatorMelbourne, Australia
#4

Holding a boundary: we do not compare what people can afford in this circle, and we do not compare what they have chosen to spend it on.

17

BramGhent, BE
#5

Reading Tavita, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What I would say is to build in far more slack than seems necessary. Everything takes longer here and something always goes wrong.

9

IlyaAlmaty, KZ
#6

My pharmacy is forty minutes away and only open certain days, so my whole schedule is built around their opening rather than mine.

7

LeniLeipzig, DE
#7

Nothing to add except that I am glad this thread exists.

10

NissaHaifa, IL
#8

Telephone reviews changed my life. I asked for them, they were granted immediately, and I had assumed they were not an option.

6

ClémenceNantes, FR
#9

My experience is that rural access is entirely workable and requires about three times the planning of an urban arrangement.

9

Birdie BWhitstable, UK
#10

Something I got right was building a relationship with the pharmacy team. They now flag things to me before they become problems.

9

BramleyBath, UK
#11

You have said something a lot of us have not managed to. Thank you.

6

IslaOban, UK
#12

Something practical: I keep a three-week buffer, always, because a ferry cancellation once cost me a fortnight.

13

RowanInverness, UK
#13

The weather is a genuine planning input. Twice this winter I could not have got anywhere if I had needed to.

10

OttiHarrogate, UK
#14

Building on what Isla wrote rather than answering the original question.

I asked whether things could be delivered and the answer was yes, which nobody had ever mentioned in three years.

11

NilsUppsala, SE
#15

Picking up Isla’s point rather than starting a new one.

The thing nobody accounts for is that a quick question is not quick here. Anything that needs a face-to-face costs me a working day.

11me too 8

PetraFacilitatorMelbourne, Australia
#16

Speaking as a facilitator: nobody should be going without something else that matters to make this work, and I would rather say that plainly.

13

OrsolyaBudapest, HU
#17

What helped was consolidating everything to one day a month, so that the journey does four things rather than one.

9