Doctor Surgeries - Cartels

Cian92

Has anybody here tried to change doctors and noticed that they have a nice little cartel set up. I decided I wasn't happy with my doctor for a variety of reasons and thought I would switch to a different one, the different one was only 1 mile away from my original one. The secretary asked me where my previous doctor was and on hearing it said they couldn't possibly take on any new patients.

At this stage I was getting suspicious, so the next day I rang back and said I was after moving from another county recently and was looking for an appointment. Not a problem, they had a load of different timeslots available :rolleyes:

Surely this is anti competitive, an agreement set up where the two local doctor surgeries won't take each others patients. Is there anything one can do about this or is it just one of those things you have to accept that you can't do anything about.

shopaholic01

I'd say it's more a basic professional courtesy.

Sir Arthur Daley

Go Compare?

Stavros Murphy

Try sueing one. You'll get a clearer view then. Easier to get shergar into the witness box than another doctor.

wazky

Buy a bone saw and do a DIY on it, man up a bit.

Femme_Fatale

Thought this was going to be about a widespread thing, but it was one incident. Oh AH...

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

Try sueing one. You'll get a clearer view then. Easier to get shergar into the witness box than another doctor.

Aaaand again...

I went to two GPs as a kid - one was the GP whose surgery my mother worked in, the other... just a GP. And they got on well, seemed fairly pally. Surgeries less than two miles from each other.

phasers

my current gp basically called my previous gp a moron when we started going to him

grim_outlook

Cian92 wrote: »

Has anybody here tried to change doctors and noticed that they have a nice little cartel set up. I decided I wasn't happy with my doctor for a variety of reasons and thought I would switch to a different one, the different one was only 1 mile away from my original one. The secretary asked me where my previous doctor was and on hearing it said they couldn't possibly take on any new patients.

At this stage I was getting suspicious, so the next day I rang back and said I was after moving from another county recently and was looking for an appointment. Not a problem, they had a load of different timeslots available :rolleyes:

Surely this is anti competitive, an agreement set up where the two local doctor surgeries won't take each others patients. Is there anything one can do about this or is it just one of those things you have to accept that you can't do anything about.

I thought that was widely known

if I were to shop every week in super value in maynooth but one day decide to change to dunnes stores in celbridge , I don't think the people at dunnes would stand at the front door and tell me to go back to super value

yet this is exactly what happens with GP,s , they have an unwritten contract with each other that they wont rob patients from each other if they live outside a particular catchment area , it might not exist in cities and large towns but the practice is widespread in rural Ireland , doctors view themselves as above vulgar competition

such high brow attitudes would not be possible were they not operating in an entirely sheltered sector

grim_outlook

Stavros Murphy wrote: »

Try sueing one. You'll get a clearer view then. Easier to get shergar into the witness box than another doctor.

no bigger clique in this country

Stained Class

grim_outlook wrote: »

no bigger clique in this country

'sept for the Legal Profession.

They cream it bigtime.