GP at Hand Avis 

I’ve been using GP at Hand for several years, and it has consistently provided a reliable and efficient service. The convenience of accessing healthcare remotely has been invaluable, especially during busy times. The staff are professional, and appointments are easy to book, with prompt and helpful consultations. This service has truly made healthcare more accessible and convenient for me. Highly recommend it for anyone looking for a dependable GP service that adapts to modern needs.

very clear, helpful and good advice

Not a valid service anymore. Not fit for purpose as you can’t get appointments, when you do they cancel and you can’t get another one for weeks.

This is not a service to use if you value your health.

Years ago when I started using GP at Hand, when it was still Babylon, the service was fantastic. I used to be able to book appointments with GPs over the phone within a few days, sometimes even same-day. There were a wide variety of time slots and I could book calls in the evenings when it's convenient for me.
The service unfortunately has gotten progressively busier over the years and now it is borderline unusable.
It takes 3-4 weeks to get an appointment now, sometimes longer.
To make matters worse my appointments are often cancelled. To wait a month to speak to someone about something urgent only to have your appointment cancelled and be told to book another one 3-4 weeks away is unbelievably frustrating, and terribly dangerous. I need urgent help with ongoing medical conditions and it's just not available.
Last month I had a GP call booked for 11.30, and they were over twenty minutes late calling me. When they did eventually call the line was bad and the line went dead while I was explaining what I needed help with. They called back but I couldn't hear anyone at all. They did not try to call back again and I had no way of contacting the GP to ask what the hell was going on.
It is unbelievably frustrating. I need urgent help with medication I am dependent on.

It is shocking that if a GP cancels your appointment you are forced to wait another three weeks or more for one, you should have emergency appointments available for people who get cancelled on that need urgent help. I am out of my medication and can’t get any more, I even tried to get an emergency prescription at my pharmacy but they couldn’t let me have them without GP approval, and were shocked when I told them how bad GP at Hand are now.

EMed keeps trying to get my reviews deleted but I will keep posting them because people need to know the truth.
I expect they will just reply with the same copy-and-paste reply they give to every other bad review, prime example of the fact there’s no personal service and they couldn’t care less about your patients.
And your reply is a lie, because the chat function in the app currently does not work. Last month I waited TWO HOURS and then it said ‘no agents are available right now’.
When I try and use the chat function now it just doesn’t work at all, it keeps ending the chat without connecting me to anyone.

I advise anyone to stay away from this service and stick with your regular GP.

I have received two referrals from GP at Hand and both times the exact same nonsense took place. The staff here are grossly incompetent and borderline negligent. They are understaffed for the number of patients they have. There is no accountability. And if you try to complain the staff refuse to ask the practice manager to call you - something their own complaints procedure says to do if you need to complain.

How Referrals from GP at Hand work:
1. You wait 2 weeks to get an appointment to see a nurse for a referral (direct GP appointments are not available).

2. The nurse sends the request to their referral team where a GP makes referral three-five days later.

3. Their admin staff enters the referral into the NHS system AND DOESNT LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS, picking specialists or clinics over an hour away on the other side of the city instead of ones near you.

4. You wait on hold for two hours to speak to someone in order to request that they refer you to a specialist or clinic closer. You’re told they will submit a request to the referral team to make that change.

5. You wait two weeks and don’t hear anything back.

6. You call them again and wait on hold another two hours and get told the same line of submitting a request to the referral team.

7. Five days later you receive a text message that says “your original referral has been cancelled. Please book another appointment if you still need this referral”

And then the process starts all over again, including the two week wait before you can see anyone.

There is a difference between the NHS being under pressure and a private provider of NHS services understaffing a digital GP practice in the name of profits.

Spoke to Dr Anne-Marie Mooney. She was very understanding and helpful! She helped me a lot

I was instructed to book a call to review a repeat prescription. The call was late, and it turned out unnecessary as a previous check had been misfiled. Not the fault of the person I spoke to, but a typical frustration with eMed.

It asked me to leave a review.

Used to be a great service but now it takes a week to do even a simple prescription refresh

If you don't have enough staff your service won't ever be much good .

Used to be great but it takes weeks now to even get a phone appointment. I was then left waiting for an hour past my appointment time which messed up my work schedule, and then I was told we ran out of time (10-15mins) and got rushed off the phone before I got the help I needed. I was sent an invite for a follow up appointment and that’s now another month away - just an absolute disgrace

Great & convenient service

Robotic bored

I would like to complaint against eMed, the former Babylon GP at hand, and my current health care provider.

Previously, it was mainly an efficient run service, but after being acquired by the American company eMed, everything changed for the worse.

Some of the wrongdoings I have experienced are as follows:
Asking for a call back when in the phone queue, and after they ring just once and hang up.
More than an hour and a half waiting for my call to be answered.
Try to book a GP appointment in the app but there are none for longer than two months.
Have an appointment cancelled for no reason and not being offered a replacement.
Requesting them to fill out a disability statement for Student Finance and never receiving it back.

Used to be a good service when it first launched, but is now useless. Typical waiting times of around 2 weeks for all appointments. Clinicians usually late - often by up to an hour. App triages appointment by type - but this constantly results in you speaking to someone who says you need to be referred or to discuss with someone else as they’re not qualified to help. They have misplaced referral letters from consultants on more than one occasion resulting in gaps in taking required medication. Huge amounts of admin involved to resolve any issues. No continuity of providers meaning you are always going over the same background as they never read the notes.
Been using for 6 years but will be going back to traditional local GP as they cannot possibly be worse than this option.

After waiting for my appointment to begin, I received a message from the service saying that they were unable to connect to my pharmacist. I was in the process of rescheduling my appointment when my phone rang and the pharmacist arrived. It sounds like they were getting in the car and they sounded a little harassed. Despite this, the pharmacist gave me good advice and prescribed my medicine quickly.

Overall, of the appointments I’ve made via the app at least 50% have been cancelled or so delayed that the app cancels the appointment. A shame because the service is supposed to maximise convenience but the opposite is actually true.

Not great
Seemed the doctor couldn’t be less interested in my case and forgot to send my prescription

Amazing experience! When people say the NHS is broken GP at hand shows me things can work extremely well!

I was seeing today by Dr Irshad Hussain, he's an exllent doctor, and kind human being, thoughtful, and caring. Please thank Dr Irshad on my behalf.

Good customer service, quick turnaround, the clinician was running late though

The customer service for GP at Hand has fallen to the point where it is essentially unusable. You have to use the chat in the app where the typical wait is 30 minutes. If you set a reminder say to come back into the app after 25 minutes typically you will find that it wasn't 30 minutes after all, but say 20, the agent has appeared not found you and signed off. What to do but go in again, wait another 30 minutes, but now check back every 2-3 minutes to see where you stand in the queue. Absolutely hopeless