Babylon: Healthcare Access

It’s great to be able to just pick up the phone rather than making a physical appointment with your doctor. Very easy and convenient. The one issue I have is that the calls are consistently late 10+ minutes. And then when you can’t answer as it’s not the time you confirmed, it’s cancelled and you need to rebook. This used to be easy but it seems there is less time available more recently. Today I had a physical appointment which I was a few minutes late for - it was very tricky to find something that was convenient - and while I was waiting in the office I received a notification saying they’d tried to call 10 minutes after my appointment (they didn’t!) and sorry they missed me but would need to reschedule. I went up to the reception team who said the doctor wasn’t able to see me as they have a 10 minute policy. Very annoying as I wasn’t 10 minutes late. If Babylon don’t see people who are a few minutes late and doctors are consistently calling late and missing appointments I dread to think how many aren’t being seen.

Babylon is a valiant attempt to try to improve on the traditional, and broken, GP practices. However despite their vast funding, the system is not yet as smart as it could be. For example, when the video GP recommends an in person appointment, you have to go through a call centre to book the appointment, and this appointment doesn’t appear in the Babylon app. The good thing is, an appointment was available the next day and there was zero wait time at the surgery. But the doctor at my appointment recommended a blood test, though the blood test clinic was in the next room and the blood clinic nurse was free, I had to spend 15 minutes on hold to the phone to the call centre trying to book an appointment, and was told the blood clinic was fully booked - as the nurse put it, “in the time you’ve been on hold, I could have done four blood tests”. The nurse was very kind and did the blood tests in advance of the appointment so I didn’t have to come back later - but it shows the flaws in Babylon’s systems that this cannot be simply automated within the app or the doctor-facing system, or allow more flexibility to give a better patient experience. I wonder whether Babylon are focusing so much on growth and pleasing their Investors they have forgotten about building a first class and joined up customer/patient experience.

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If I could give this service 0 stars I would. Firstly, the “appointment” was rushed and only a formality (the doc had already made up her mind about what to do and was trying to get me off the phone essentially). I was told I needed to have a sample tested and I had to call another number on my own to request a sample kit. Fine, I did this, waited on my sample kit (bear in mind my condition was pretty serious at this point). Four days later the kit arrived 2nd class post. I’m sorry but this is totally inappropriate when you know these tests are urgent. I followed the instructions on the kit and the following morning took the sample to a clinic (which by the way defeats the entire point of this app) only to arrive and be told “oh sorry nobody’s here, nothing we can do.” I called, was “second” in the queue for approx 30 mins and decided to get a callback instead. The operator was the most unhelpful person, told me they were unaware of this issues with the clinic (then why send me there??!!!) and there’s nothing they can do. Most apathetic, ridiculous service. Now out of the city for 2 weeks and no further forward with these clowns who insist I need to somehow teleport myself to one of their clinics and expect it to be open when it says it will. What a joke. It would have been far easier to get a conventional doctors appointment. AVOID!!

I have a chronic illness and gp at hand has been a revelation for me, I can book appointments at the click of a button and speak to someone within an hour. My prescriptions are sent immediately to the pharmacy across the road and when I need specialist care that can be organised with ease from my sick bed. I am finally starting to see improvement in an illness spanning nearly a decade and my quality of life has therefore also significantly improved. I was at an east London gp practice for years and getting an appointment was almost impossible, the doctors were tired, stressed and restricted to 10mins where they could treat one issue only. This meant that for years they failed to diagnose a chronic illness that could have left me permanently bed bound. If you have a great local gp that you are happy with then I don’t suppose it’s necessary for you to move to the app. But if you struggle to get appointments or require many appointments and have difficulty getting around I would strongly recommend. For me personally it has genuinely changed my life for the better.

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I have had a terrible experience with GP at hand and every time I have an interaction with babylon nothing goes smoothly: 1. I lost more than 1 month on a waiting list for a serious mental health condition because the referral from the GP was not actioned by the clinical support team. This caused much distress and an even longer, unnecessary wait for treatment to start. The team didn’t have an answer as to why the referral wasn’t actioned and had I not persisted, nothing would have been done. 2. I was given a hard to find prescription and told to call the support team if I couldn’t get the medication. After trying 6 pharmacies with no luck I got the prescription changed to a more widely available drug. The prescription was useless as it was an entirely different medication (topical rather than soluble) and I was unable to use it and had to make another GP appointment. 3. After booking an 11:30 appointment, I waited until 12:00 and still the doctor had not called/started the consultation. 4. I received a confirmation for a physical appointment that I didn’t request that included notes that I didn’t write. I can only assume this was another patients request and note attached which is worrying.