GP at Hand Reviews 986

It is like not having a GP. It is very difficult to get an appointment with a doctor. Moreover they cancelled all my repeated prescriptions from the previous practice. More aspects are disappointing. I tried it for three months, now I am changing practice.

They used to be good in 2021. Almost all the time I’m waiting for a doctor over a week that I end up having to self diagnose myself and treat the problems. The most useless GP service I’ve experienced. Definitely moving on now. It’s terrible

GP at hand used to be a good service, but it is now completely unfit for purpose and dangerous. Decisions are based entirely on somewhat arbitrary questionnaires. It is not possible to speak to someone on the phone when the outcome of the online booking is inappropriate you are either cut off and told to go back to online booking or only able to speak to someone without clinical knowledge. Serious incidents will no doubt occur from this.

terrible service, there is nothing smart about their smart triage, they seem to be doing a weight loss money grab, deprecated their GP app and when you call they cant help you with any bookings.

I am pregnant and asked for an urgent referral to rheumatologist to get vital treatment for an autoimmune condition which can cause my baby to have a congenital heart block. Only way to prevent this is to get that specific treatment. Awful doctor said I needed to wait for my 1st scan and confirm pregnancy so she can speed up the process. Luckily I booked another appointment and literally begged another doctor and finally had a quick referral. But some of these Emed doctors are so useless. They literally get paid to sit there, not listen to patients and put people in danger. On top of this, it is sometimes really hard to get appointments with GPs and they are all online.

This used to be absolutely brilliant, joined back in 2021 when they had a dedicated app for booking same day video call appointments.

Over the last couple years the service has gone completely downhill, there is no longer a dedicated app, you are instead expected to use the NHS app which is completely useless. The reason for joining this back in 2021 was due to the ease of use and simplicity in getting help or order repeat prescriptions.

Please DO NOT join this GP service as it will now be more complicated to get any help compared to a traditional GP.

Used to be great. Is now just as bad as the rest of the NHS.
I've been with gpathand for about 5 years after having AWFUL experiences with my local GP.
They used to have a seperate app. You would log in to the app, click book an appointment, select a time and press 'book'. Simple. Easy. Almost like it's 2026.
Now you have to go on the NHS app.
You cannot book an appointment with a GP if you don't have symptoms. As an ADHD patient that needs a SCA that means that I have to ask for an admin request. I, inevitably, then have to wait several days for a response. The response will, inevitably, request information I already gave in my initial request. I then have to wait for them to send me a link so that I can book an appointment with a GP. I then have to wait for my GP's appointment. I then have to have the appointment (last time it lasted 1 min, 16 seconds) only for the GP that I saw to pass it to another doctor so that THEY can approve my SCA. I then have to wait for the SCA to actually be put on the system.

This is not to mention that the last time a SCA was requested by my psychiatrist it wasn't acted on for five months.

I cannot see any of my test results on the NHS app. They do not give you an obvious contact number online and it would appear they only have receptionists at actual GP surgeries handling calls that used to go to a huge team in a call centre.

Basically, they got rid of the app and they got rid of their call centre because Babylon Health collapsed (because the NHS is an un-profitable mess) and was sold to eMed. eMed moved from the Babylon Health App (excellent) to their own eMed app (crap). They have now moved to the NHS app (almost unusable).

They used to have good clinicians . Currently there is NO GP at Hand and a receptionist/administrator will make the decisions about your health and medical conditions! A triage system to cause you a medical condition if you don’t have one! They call you after the checks to just read the results to you! Don’t bother to call them back no way you are going to see an actual doctor! Don’t bother to complain, you will receive 30 pages of a reply of how you helped them to become better!

Appalling- impossible to make an appointment and the “smart triage” system just asks a series of irrelevant questions. When I contact the practice they simply refer me back to the smart triage. Useless.

Abysmal service which the Care Quality Commission should reinspect as a matter of urgency, since the quality of care has plummeted so much in the last few years. I have been with GP at Hand since it was under Babylon, then eMed, and now the NHS, and each year the patient safety levels have gotten worse and worse.

I have finally pulled the plug and registered for a local, physical GP practice following GP at Hand mishandling my blood test samples and losing my ECG results.

The administrative staff are not fit to be in the healthcare profession, they do not care one bit if you live or die, they just want to sit on their phones and avoid speaking to patients. When I asked two different members of staff about my mishandled blood samples and my missing ECG results, I got a "computer says no" type response with no solution.

Unless you have the time and energy to advocate for yourself over, and over, and over again in order to receive a barely satisfactory level of care, do yourself a favour and avoid GP at Hand like the plague.

terrible service when it came to doing a basic health check, rude healthcare assistant who took wrong measurements. Avoid doing an MOT with them

I strongly advise anyone considering GP at Hand to think very carefully before signing up. My experience has been consistently negative and deeply concerning.

Access to actual GPs is extremely poor. Getting to speak to a real GP when you genuinely need one is incredibly difficult, and care is fragmented across different clinicians who clearly do not communicate properly.

I have been repeatedly given incorrect information about prescribing rules and NHS regulations, including being told things that are simply not true. These errors directly affected my care and caused unnecessary delays and distress.

Despite being on long‑term medications for years, GP at Hand refused to put them on repeat prescriptions without valid medical justification. Instead, I was forced into a completely absurd system where I had to speak to physiotherapists who cannot prescribe, only to then need multiple additional appointments every single month before a GP would eventually prescribe the same medication anyway. This is inefficient, illogical, and clearly designed to shift workload rather than provide care.

Medical records are not handled transparently. After discussions with clinicians, entries were later added to my medical record that directly contradicted what was actually said, without informing me. I also discovered that my case had been discussed with other clinicians without my knowledge or consent, which completely undermines trust.

This service feels more like a bureaucratic obstacle course than a GP practice. You are bounced between clinicians, misinformed about your rights, and left to chase basic care that should be straightforward.

Overall, GP at Hand has caused me significant stress, delays in treatment, and loss of confidence in primary care. Patients deserve honesty, continuity, and access to qualified decision‑makers — none of which I have experienced here.

I would not recommend GP at Hand to anyone, particularly those with long‑term conditions, disabilities, or ongoing medication needs.

Absolute waste of time. WON’T prescribe any acute medicines but ALSO WON’T prescribe any repeat medications. Literally just had the ‘customer service’ woman at AXA say their only function is ‘to refer to specialists for example with hip pain or a skin thing’. Taking people’s money and not taking any pressure off the NHS system or providing any clinical care.

Discusting place not fit for humans doctors are not even qualified waste of time and money

I've experienced two doctor appointments with this practice over the last couple weeks. On both instances it was obvious that they could care a less about me and I had to jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops to get treated. I will be finding a GP elsewhere ASAP!

I got a message from my GP asking to book a followup appointment with her - and it seems impossible to do!!!
My message (calls or through RapidHealth) keep being dismissed or poorly handled... there seems to be more importance made to rapid handling, rather to actual care and problem solving. Despite use of digital platform, everything seems to be done to make the patient experience more difficult...

Utterly incompetent handling of a basic prescriptions admin issue. I clearly explained why there was a gap in my ADHD repeat requests (flexible use agreed with my psychiatrist, including not taking it at weekends). GP at Hand either didn’t read or didn’t understand the message and then escalated it by contacting my specialist asking for a new shared care agreement “with the dose I mentioned” — something I did not request.

The result is I am going away on holiday tomorrow and will not have my medication for my holiday purely because of incompetent handling from GPatHand

When you’re dealing with controlled medication and shared care, this level of carelessness is unacceptable. It created unnecessary stress, unnecessary specialist admin, and it makes the service feel unsafe and unreliable.

I needed an urgent Doctors appointment as a follow up to having to go to A&E. That appointment needed to happen within 7 days of my visit to A&E, and was told by the A&E doctor that had to happen. Despite emailing and messaging multiple times I was refused this and my poor health relapsed within a matter of days, leading to another A&E visit and another month extra recovery. My situation was immediately time dependent and I was left with no option but to book an appointment 4 weeks later than the A&E doctor required and I ended up with a huge hassle having to find urgent treatment elsewhere using NHS111, private services and multiple other doctors.

This is an absolutely abysmal and unsafe NHS practice in my opinion and quite frankly, don't risk your health being listed here. Their processes are unsafe, their triage is unsafe and they seem to put profit over patient safety. I left and have since joined a local NHS practice and the difference is incredible.

I was there at the start when it was Babylon and I LOVED it. The idea makes so much sense - let people go to where they can be seen, rather than waiting for one specific GP to have a time slot. Unfortunately it's now the worst shit show imaginable. I waited TWO YEARS for a simple ultrasound referral and when I finally got to attend the appointment (feeling like I had won the lottery), the doctor asked to see the results of an ultrasound I'd had done privately in 2023 and didn't even bother to do one for me on the day. She offered me several options including surgery and promised to schedule a follow up within two weeks, but as always with GP at Hand, it's radio silence for over a month with no way to contact anyone, and I have no doubt I will never hear from them on this again and will have to start the whole process over elsewhere. Hate this service so much. Oh I also had a prescription from a private GP that they were supposed to take over, but because they will only fulfil a prescription if it is less than three months from issue, and they take five months to one year to do ANY ACTION, OF ANY KIND, the prescription keeps expiring so I keep having to get it reissued from the private doctor again at a huge waste of time and money. There are not enough words in the dictionary to convey how much I hate GP at Hand. They really should be shut down, for the health of the nation.

They used to be really good when they were Babylon, but since the change over and new triage system the patient care is non existent. The triage system is clunky and has only a very few, pre-set options for 'symptoms' so for most issue you are out of luck with no way to describe what the actual problem is. Takes weeks to get an appointment (which will only be by phone), no choice of who you see, no way to follow up on previous appointments or on-going conditions. Referals do not actually work and you are left chasing and chasing and going nowhere, all while you get sicker. Very dangerous neglect of patients needs, and horrible attitude.